


You're Awful, I Love You

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Blacksand - Freeform, M/M, QUICKSAND
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-01-25 10:15:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1645079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a Round 2 kinkmeme fill, as seen here: http://rotg-kink.dreamwidth.org/2200.html?thread=3627416</p>
<p>Pitch is missing, and this has thrown off the balance of the world. Mother Nature commands the Guardians to go find him. Unfortunately, he's been kidnapped by Eris, goddess of discord and she's made him her love slave. But she's willing to play a game or two with the Guardians. (And Sandy's going to win.)</p>
<p>I think there's at least one more mythological figure in this, also some Christmas Cookie and Jackrabbit that's not happening yet because of lack of communication, also some yetis who actually are working things out pretty well together, and maybe an iPod, and e e cummings' poetry (but that's not till the very end). I don't actually remember, I wrote this last year and now I'm editing it to make it better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Arctic Jungle

**Author's Note:**

> In my headcanon, the oldest Pitch and Sandy can be is humanity’s development of behavioral modernity, so about 50,000 years. The other Guardians are all much younger. I know there’s some stuff about Bunnymund being also incredibly old, but in my headcanon he became a Guardian (actually they all did) in a similar means to Jack—that is, being human, dying, and being chosen by the Man in the Moon. I’m working mostly from the movie, especially North’s line about how we “should have seen Bunny” before he became a Guardian. Mother Nature is something else, and I want her to be muuuuuch older, so I can’t square it with the book canon of her being Pitch’s daughter. I hope that’s okay. Sorry, I just really want to run with the flexibility of what the movie allows.

Train tracks, vicious dogs, high waves, seatbelts and helmets with “no” symbols over them, and dozens of other images coalesce and dissolve over Sandy’s head as he gestures wildly, the line in between his eyebrows almost as deep as his frown.

            “I know, I know!” Jack Frost runs his fingers through his hair in exasperation. He stands with Sandy and the rest of the Guardians in front of the globe room hearth at the Workshop, where they’ve gathered for an emergency meeting to try to figure out how to deal with the current rapidly growing problem. “I know! Do you realize how many sledding hills end in roads? And I’ve been running myself ragged trying to make the ice thick enough on all the lakes and ponds and rivers—and let me tell you, rivers are _hard_ to freeze fully—that the kids have just been blithely running on to—they don’t even check anymore! It was difficult enough months ago, when we all were at the height of belief, but now?”

            Tooth flutters in the air next to him, nodding sympathetically. “I’ve seen some troubling things while doing my duties as well. Several times now, I’ve felt myself lose a believer because they didn’t think the gift I left behind was enough. I mean, every year there’re always been a few children like that, but it’s happening now more than ever before. It’s almost like they don’t _want_ to believe any more. And the ones that do—one of my fairies found a fake tooth left under a pillow. I’m still not sure what that was about. A test? Anyway, that’s nothing compared to the memories I’ve been getting. So many of them—at least since the belief precipice—have been so flat, so dull—no triumph, no lessons learned, no discoveries made—mostly just a sort of dull contentment—they don’t seem to be distinguishing one day from the next—and they’re children! How are they getting bored with life already?”

            “I don’t know, but I’ve been feeling it too.” Bunnymund crosses his arms, a worried expression on his face and his ears flat against his skull. “They _are_ bored. They don’t hope for the things they want to happen anymore, they _expect_ them. Really rubs me the wrong way, I tell you what.”

            Even if it wasn’t for his ears, Jack wouldn’t buy the lightness of his tone. Bunny was the only one of the Guardians who had to face being walked through last Easter, and now, with belief dropping so fast, he might have to feel that horrible sensation of nothingness _again_ , within the span of only a year. And he knows, from far too much personal experience, that it’s not something you get used to.

            North sighs, looking at the globe, now significantly darker than it should be. “I admit I have not been staying in touch with wonder as much as I should. Has become very difficult to find. Even surprise! And as for Christmas, you see how the lights are so sparse? Were like that when population was only three billion! And yet naughty list stays the same, or even longer! Next Christmas, I do not know what will happen. If the children get what they want, is no wonder—like Bunny says, they expect. If they do not, do not feel like they are on naughty list, they lose belief. Why?! We are all able to do our duties, and still belief falls.

            “Sandy, you have noticed the lack of caution, but are they still dreaming? How is that going?”

            The sand whirls above his head, but solidifies into nothing but an exclamation point as he notices something very strange unfolding outside. He waves the others over to a window from where they can all watch a rapidly growing dot of green in the midst of the ice field. He turns to the others and the exclamation point splits into dozens of little alarm bells.

            Tooth’s eyes widen in realization as it becomes clear that the green is growing not only figuratively, but literally as well. “ _Her_ ,” she says in a small voice.

            “You don’t mean…?” Bunny asks, and she nods. “Bloody hell.”

            “Guys, what’s going on?” Jack stands on his staff to get a better view. “Wait…is that a _tree_ growing outside?”

            “Phil! Steve! Susan!” North calls out to a few nearby yetis. “Evacuate everyone, elves too, to homes! I will say when is all clear!” He bends down in a half-crouch and tries to herd a group of curious elves towards the passages that lead to the yeti village. “Shoo, shoo, you do not want to be here!”

            “Seriously, though, what is going on?” Jack asks again.

            “You’ll find out soon enough mate,” Bunny says. “Might as well watch her make an entrance. Probably—hopefully—you won’t get to again for a few hundred years.”

            Outside, there is not just one tree, but dozens now, sprouting through the snow. If Jack had to guess, he would say that the first one is now well over two hundred feet tall, and the others are catching up rapidly. Even as he watches, more and more appear, along with smaller plants that sprout and bloom around the roots of the earlier trees. And though he’s never been to the tropics, he’s seen enough nature documentaries to know that that’s where these trees should be. So many…and no two of the same species, at least as far as he can tell. And then he notices something he’s pretty sure everyone else was expecting. The forest is heading directly towards the window they’re all looking out of.

            Green, green, and more green, living towers draped with vines and dotted with fruit and flowers, teeming with insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, everything—Jack thinks he sees a monkey in a tree, and was that a jaguar in the undergrowth? How—what—who? And still the trees draw nearer—they’re at the window almost—they’re at the window.

            Sandy reacts first, flying back to the center of the room and wrapping ropes of sand around the waists of the other Guardians, pulling them away from the window just before several massive branches covered with leaves the size of umbrellas burst through, sending shattered glass flying everywhere. Most of the branches still, then, but one continues growing purposefully, slowly angling downward until it stops at the feet of the shaken Guardians standing before the globe. When they dare to look up, they see her emerging from the thick growth just outside the window.

            She is a very tall—Jack guesses that she’s about ten feet, but the huge tree could be making her look smaller—muscular woman, with long, wild, dark brown hair that reaches to her feet, the curls interspersed with thin flowering vines that also grow from her scalp. Her skin is a slightly lighter shade of brown, and as she approaches Jack thinks he can see subtle barklike patterns in it—he also realizes he can see a _lot_ of that skin: whoever this person is, she’s completely naked. Dumbfounded, he forces himself to look steadily at her strangely shifting blue-green eyes.

            Of course, he’s then given the opportunity to notice that those eyes are wide with pure fury, which he hopes very very much isn’t going to be directed at him—enough to make Bunny look in his direction.

            When she steps off the end of her branch, she’s only about her arm’s length away from the Guardians. “Mother Nature,” North says, bowing slightly. “Welcome to the Workshop. To what occasion do we owe this visit?”

            She folds her arms, looking down at all of them. “You have upset the balance that you are supposed to help maintain,” she says with a voice as icy as the wastelands of Antarctica. “And you are going to fix it now.”

            North glances as the others in consternation before attempting to answer her. “I’m afraid I am not sure what you are talking about, Mother. We have seen the signs, yes, and can tell there is big problem, because we are losing believers so fast, but we have all been doing our duties with utmost diligence. We have protected the children as well as we are able—”

            “Silence, Nicholas St. North. Do you think that the balance was upset only when you started losing believers? No. That was merely the last symptom of a much larger problem. Balance, as any starving cheetah or broken-legged gazelle might tell you, doesn’t mean the odds are always on your side.

            “I will try to be clear with you, since it now occurs to me that while the centuries that have passed since the end of the dark ages might seem short to me, for beings such as you it is quite long enough to figure a few things out—and none of you has acted in a way that makes me believe you have done so.”

            “The end of the dark ages?” Tooth’s wings open and close a few times. “What does our first defeat of Pitch have to do with what’s happening now?”

            Mother Nature slowly turns her gaze to Tooth. “Everything, little memory-magpie. That’s when you first began upsetting the balance.”

            “What!” Bunny interrupts, “By driving that menace into the shadows? How? You must be joking!”

            She seems to grow even taller, her nostrils flaring as she takes a deep breath. “Do I _look_ like I’m joking? Listen now, and listen well. No matter what the Man in the Moon may get away with making you believe by never telling you anything clearly, Pitch Black is just as much his creature as any of you. Yes! A guardian! No ceremony made him so, and his task was ever-thankless, but a guardian none the less.

            “Do you forget, with the Moon’s gift of immortality, that there is much to be afraid of in this world? The children need fear, _humans_ need fear, within a proper balance, to protect them. Have you never heard of caution? Neither wonder, nor hope, nor memory, nor dreams, nor fun, has ever made anyone hesitate before walking into a dark alley. Caution—tempered fear, has. And it is often necessary!” She glances at Jack, who seems to be trying to hide behind his staff. “You know well enough what can happen without proper caution.

            “At the end of the dark ages, I hoped that the balance would slowly repair itself. All of you and Pitch would eventually settle into your appropriate duties. You were all weaker, then, and Pitch’s defeat seemed but temporary setback. He slowly grew stronger, and avoided you.”

            A swirl of dreamsand appears above Sandy’s head as if he wants to say something, but he thinks better of it and lets it dissolve into the air.

            “Now, though, when he returned, actually strong enough to restore balance—yes! To restore balance! He had many years to make up for, don’t you _realize_? On the scale of humanity, nothing Pitch tried to do that Easter was wrong. Unfortunately for all the children that are in desperate need of caution to protect them and a touch of fear to add the thrill of uncertainty to their lives, all of you—even the Man in the Moon, that fool—got caught up in a simple good-versus-evil story as if you were the children instead of their protectors. Your defeat of Pitch this time left him weaker than ever before, too weak to even do his duties in the faltering, half-mad way he had been for centuries.

            “Yes, he was still in the world. Fear and caution by habit could still exist. This lasted a few months, for that time when you must have been gaining believers by the swarm, simply by actually being out and about in the world more. But caution grew weaker, and weaker, and finally, it disappeared. And that would be when you suddenly noticed a precipitous drop in your number of believers. The children have no caution anymore. Your efforts to protect them now do not address what they really need and will not restore their faith. The more you personally do to keep them safe, the less they see that their actions have consequences. Without fear or caution, they cannot even imagine any consequences. They are not learning how to live anymore.

            “And that is why you are going to find Pitch Black and restore him to his proper strength.”

            “No!” Bunny exclaims. “Don’t you realize what he tried to do to us? I know you’re famous as a neutral party, but _we’ve_ never claimed anything like that! If Pitch’s so important, why don’t you hunt him down? If you want him fixed, do it yourself!”

            “E. Aster Bunnymund.” Mother Nature narrows her eyes at him. “Do you realize that your daring to speak to me in such a manner only indicates this world’s desperate need for the return of Pitch—for the sake of all who are human or have been human?”

            “But—but it’s a good question! Why not you?” Tooth says, airborne again, though she stays close to the ground.

            “Because this is a human problem, and you protect the humans. Because you caused this problem in the first place. And because I have many, many other duties to attend to. The humans will care if their children die from a lack of caution, and so will you. I care about this as well, but if you fail, I will get over it. Still, I do not like the idea of a species dying out thanks to the stupidity of a handful of individuals. I command you because I assume the outcome of you not following my demands would be highly undesirable to all of us. You, more so than me.”

            The Guardians glance around at each other, cowed and chilled. Sandy leaves the group to float up near Mother Nature’s face. With a quick sequence of sand symbols, he asks a question that must not be another attempt at refusing this quest, as the others see Mother Nature’s face soften slightly.

            “I’m sure you’ll figure something out, Sandy. He’s not different from the rest of you.” Sandy nods, and floats back slightly. “So,” she looks at the group again. “Do you agree to find and restore Pitch?”

            “We will try,” North says, and the others nod.

            “Good.” She glances around her, finally taking in the destruction her jungle had wrought in the Workshop. “Hmm. Forgive me. In my hurry to get here, I forgot to dress for the location.” In the blink of an eye, the trees and everything in and around them turn to ice and snow. Her skin fades to a blinding snow-white, her eyes to sky-blue. Her hair darkens to the black of a six-month night, shining with the colors of the Aurora Borealis where the light hits it. “And now I will take my leave of you.” She calmly turns and begins walking up the rapidly melting ice-branch.

            “Why change if you’re just going to leave?” Jack figures he might as well ask the question now. After all, next time they meet, he’ll probably be too afraid to do so.

            “I’m not leaving the Arctic at once. There is work for me to do here, Jack Frost. As long as I am on Earth, there is always work for me to do.” She pauses for a moment, looking off into the distance. “Here, now more than ever. If I had known that a bunch of dead dinosaurs were going to cause this much of a clusterfuck…” She trails off and begins walking the branch again.

            “Wait!” Jack calls out. “What are we supposed to do with all those animals that you brought with you?”

            Mother Nature turns back to him with a puzzled look on her face. “What do you mean? You don’t have to do anything. They are now ice and snow, like the trees.”

            “You _killed_ them?”

            “Would you rather they had frozen to death? In any event, they were only individuals.” Dumbfounded, Jack asks her no more questions as she makes her unfaltering way out the broken window.


	2. The Cold Globe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Guardians find that Pitch isn't in his lair and split up to search the globe for him. Jack and Sandy find a cloud of nightmare sand over the ocean, but it's hard to tell if this is actually a sign that Pitch is around.

             After helping the yetis get started on the repairs by moving most of the ice and snow outside, Jack joins the other Guardians around the fireplace in North’s study. “So where do we start?” Jack asks, as Bunny firmly shuts the door behind him to block out the arctic wind.

            “From what I know, Pitch’s lair has exactly this much similarity with my Warren,” Bunny answers. “It’s anywhere and everywhere, as long as you know how to get to it, but there’s the problem. After we defeated Pitch, the entrance we knew about closed up.”

            Beds and closet doors appear above Sandy’s head, followed by a question mark. Tooth frowns. “I don’t think we can travel to his lair the way he does. We aren’t shadows.”

            “What we need,” says North, “is not to be shadows, but to find child who believes. Under their bed would be entrance.”

            “If we could find that kind of kid we wouldn’t be caught up in this mess in the first place,” Bunny points out.

            North looks thoughtful for a moment, then turns to Sandy and Jack. “You two—and I do not want to bring up memories of pain, but is important—had most interaction with Pitch last Easter. Was there anything in your encounters that might help us find him?”

            “I don’t know.” Jack looks away from the group and up towards the heavy wooden beams of the ceiling. “I think you have to be afraid, or have Pitch inviting you, to get to his lair without knowing where it is. And neither of those ways will work until we find him.” Jack turns to Sandy to see if he has any ideas.

            An image of a cave slowly forms over his head, followed by Pitch’s profile. They alternate slowly, and then more quickly, followed by dozens of others.

            “Yes!” North looks at the others. “Did you get? Sandy thinks Pitch’s lair can be accessed from wherever there is no light. Right?” Sandy nods. “So we all go to cave where there is absolute darkness, and walk until we cross over to lair.”

            “That seems kind of reckless.” Tooth looks uncomfortable. “I mean, I’m not bothered or anything, but what if we get lost? Under all those tons and tons of rocks? In passages smaller than a wingspan?”

            “Don’t worry, Tooth, I will not let us get lost,” North assures her.

            “Try being bothered by it,” says Bunny. “It’ll probably get us there faster. Anyway, I have another problem with this plan: Sandy glows.”

            Sandy rolls his eyes and snaps his fingers, and at once he no longer produces his own light. He slowly turns around, raising his eyebrows at the rest of the group.

            “Well, all right then!” Jack says, picking up his staff and resting it on his shoulder. “So we get to Pitch’s lair, find him, take him to—uh, wherever he can recover—feed him some svartsoppa until he’s appropriately horrible again, and send him on his not-so-merry way. Seems simple enough.”

            “We do step one anyway,” says North, leading them towards his map room so they can find the nearest suitable cave.

 

***

 

            “I see light up ahead!” Tooth says, relief obvious in her voice. “Oh, wait. That’s not what we want. Did we get turned around?”

            “No way—it was bright and sunny when we got into the cave. That light is so gray and dim—”

            “Ha! Exactly, Bunny! I recognize it! We’ve gotten to Pitch’s lair!” Jack runs towards the uncertain illumination, his passing sending small stones clattering through the murk.

            “Everyone! Be on guard! Watch for Night Mares!” North calls, not bothering to be quiet.

            Even in Pitch’s lair, though, their lack of caution has no consequence, for they’re not attacked on their way in, and there’s no sign of any forthcoming attack once they’ve gathered at the base of an entirely darkened globe.

            Sandy tentatively touches one of the continents with his fingertips to find that the metal feels as cold as the night side of Pluto. A deep frown settles on his face that does not entirely clear when he turns to face the others.

            “All right,” says North. “We will stick together, begin searching for Pitch and other, easier way of getting in and out. He should be here—where else could he have gone?”

            “Actually, I think we should split up.” The slightest smirk tugs at Jack’s lips. “The search would go faster.”

            “No, no, Jack, that is not good idea. Would be easier for us to be attacked if Night Mares are about. And even if Mother Nature says Pitch is too weak to do what we are told he needs to do, I will not place bet on that.”

            Sandy indicates that he agrees with Jack. Five human figures appear over his head and disappear one by one.

            “Exactly, Sandy! Look, I know the rest of you have been living in your own little worlds since before movies were a thing, but if we split up—like the stupid people in horror movies do—we’re going to have a lot better chance of finding the ‘monster’ down here.”

            “I guess that’s worth a shot,” Tooth says, much more confident now that they’re in the lofty chambers at the center of Pitch’s realm. “Should we meet back here in half an hour, then?”

            Sandy holds up a hand. He had only wanted to show Jack that he knew what he was talking about. It might be pointless to actually do the search. He beckons the others to Pitch’s globe, and motions that they should place their hands on it.

            “Whoa! I could feel that cold.”

            “It feels wrong. None of our globes have ever been like that,” Tooth says.

            “Mine wasn’t—even with only one believer, and him wavering.” Bunny can’t fully suppress a shudder as he rubs warmth back into his hand.

            “Sandy, you were one who noticed this, what does it mean? Is Pitch…dead? Bunny and Tooth are right, even at our lowest ebb, our globes were not like this.”

            Sandy offers the theory that the freezing globe doesn’t mean that Pitch is dead—otherwise there would be no globe at all. But it does mean that Pitch isn’t here. Normally, the Guardians’ globes show a light for each believer, but, thanks to Tooth, whatever material the globe is made of is heated by the residual memories of adults who once believed. Even with no current child believers and few past believers, Pitch’s globe should not be colder than the rest of its surroundings. What it looks like—based on Sandy’s own temporary death and recovery—is that Pitch has been taken somewhere where a magical force has severed him from all of humanity. His own globe was almost this cold when he returned.

            “Ah, and that must have happened when Mother Nature said all caution was suddenly gone. But do you think he is still on Earth?”

            Sandy nods. Any being who would know about Pitch and want to seal him somewhere would have to be or have been reliant upon humans at some point for their existence, and so would be unable to leave Earth until humanity did.

            “Okay. New plan,” North says, tapping his fingers on the pommels of his swords. “We split globe into quadrants, then we all split up and look for any sign of Pitch. Whoever finds any clue will summon others.”

            “Quadrants? There are five of us, in case you forgot.” Jack looks like he can’t decide whether to be annoyed or hurt.

            “Jack, no, I am not forgetting you. You will go with Sandy.”

            “You think I can’t take care of myself?”

            Sandy tugs on Jack’s sleeve before North can answer and allows some swirls of dreamsand to float above his head, shrugs, and points at Jack’s mouth.

            “Oh. Okay. I guess I can see how it would be useful to have someone who can talk along with you. It’ll be a lot faster for me to explain what we find—if we do find anything.”

            “…Yes! Yes, exactly.” North claps his hands together. “Now! I suppose we just follow light out?”

            “None of that nonsense needed.” With a tap of his foot, Bunny opens a tunnel. “Now that I know where we are and where we were, let’s just get back to the sleigh and get on with divvying up the world.”

 

***

 

            North assigns Sandy and Jack the northern half of the eastern hemisphere.

            “Two weeks and nothing from anyone yet. Did Bunny ever say how he was going to deal with the ocean? Maybe he just decided not to. Could Pitch be in the ocean? And if he was, why would he be there?” Jack yawns. They’ve been searching for signs of Pitch close to the equator for the past few days, and the heat has a soporific effect on Jack, making it almost impossible for him to control the wind. To help, Sandy has been letting him sit on his dreamsand cloud, which prevents Jack from falling into the Pacific, but otherwise makes him even sleepier.

            Sandy doesn’t offer any answers to Jack’s questions. What they’re all doing now is very different from their ordinary work, and requires far more concentration. They can’t jump from the location of one child to another, and he can’t reach out to sleeping minds eager for dreams. No, now they look for something hidden, and so they must look carefully.

            And though they have the whole Earth to search, and even though it’s only been two weeks, Sandy is beginning to worry. It wouldn’t be like Pitch to seal himself off from humanity—he was always desperate for belief, and deep down, as with all the other Guardians, there was probably something in him that would prevent him from willingly leaving his post, no matter how little he remembered of his true role. But who could keep Pitch captive for so long, without some evidence of any struggle to escape? Sandy knew very well that Pitch hated being told what to do and thought of himself as superior to most others, so how was he being kept quiet? He didn’t like to think that his most recent defeat could have permanently damaged the arrogant playfulness of the Nightmare King. If only he had not been quite so skillful in creating the Night Mares, then they might have risked taking him captive, but those glowing yellow eyes and sharp hooves and their insatiable hunger for fear—well, after a battle, they were something anyone would be reluctant to face.

            He’d welcome the sight of one _now_ , though.

            Jack grasps his shoulder, startling him out of his thoughts. “Look! Over there! I think it’s nightmare sand!” He points to something indistinct hovering just above the horizon, and Sandy hastens them towards it, not bothering to shape his cloud into something more vehicle-like.

            A black, twisting cloud, occasionally glinting with blues and purples, hovers over the low waves, the only distinct sight as far as Sandy and Jack can see. Though there’s little else it could be other than nightmare sand, Sandy sends out an exploratory tendril of dreamsand into the cloud once they’re close enough. It immediately turns a fragment of the maelstrom’s black grains to gold before they dissipate.

            “Wow. So this is what nightmare sand does when no one’s telling it what to do,” Jack says. Sandy nods distractedly as he hurriedly shapes three messenger pigeons out of sand and sends them off to find the other Guardians.

            “Pitch must be around here, though, right?”

            Sandy tells Jack he isn’t sure, but if he lets him think for a minute, he might be able to find out.

            He settles down on the cloud, cross-legged, and places his hands on his knees. With a slow, deep breath, he closes his eyes and lets his mind reach out for Pitch. The process has something in common with how he finds dreamers, though that is easy and this is not. It is something he cannot do with any other immortal, though he has not told anyone this. He thinks it might be possible that he _could_ learn to do so with others, but he does not care to. After all, it took him centuries of practice from his first thought that he would always like to be able to find Pitch Black to actually be able to do so with some accuracy. Besides, the others were generally much easier to find.

            However, centuries of practice were much more than could be written off as an idle hobby, especially since he technically didn’t have any idle hours. That practice wasn’t something he’d like to explain to the Guardians, and so he’s never told them that he hasn’t always had this ability, and that it only applies to Pitch. Not that he lets something like this come up in conversation often.  He smiles to himself slightly. He’s never regretted his decision to stop talking.

            He pushes away these and all other such thoughts and once more sets himself to the task of finding Pitch. The dreamers in Guam are faint in his mind, but considering how deeply Pitch might be hidden, even they might drown out what he is listening—to use an inaccurate word—for. He forces his normally global perspective to become narrower and narrower, until all his awareness is focused on this tiny fragment of ocean. Nothing. He presses his lips together and gathers his mind once more. He mustn’t become disappointed. Even when Pitch wasn’t hidden, he was sometimes difficult to find.

            Sandy’s mind dives ever deeper into the sea, searching for that almost-sensation that means he’s found Pitch. The sound of a bell that has never been rung, the scent of smoke from the burning of a tree that never grew, the taste of the cake that would have been made for a dead girl’s birthday party, the sight of familiar strangers in a new city, the touch of soft velvet that was only ever made of oil paint…many absences, curious and sorrowful absences, all of them falling into a not-quite whole that means Pitch.

            Farther still and farther…so deep, how deep!...ah, the Mariana Trench. He and Jack must be above it now, that would explain…well, he will plumb the depths regardless. In absolute distance it is not very far. Down, and down, and down…if there is a mind here of any sort it should stand out like a beacon. He widens his focus ever so slightly, and senses something down there, at the bottom of this trench. It’s like the idea of a palace…or a bubble…he can’t tell, it’s very foggy. _But does it have anything to do with Pitch?_ Maybe. Maybe. If Pitch was anywhere, this is where he would be, but he is not definitely here. He was here? He will be here? Is this his prison? Who…and Sandy remembers, the thought colder than the depths, and quickly pulls himself back to the dreamsand cloud.

            When he opens his eyes, Tooth’s already joined him and Jack. “Sandy! Jack said you were looking for Pitch somehow. Did you find him?” She doesn’t ask him how he was looking, and for that he’s grateful.

            Sandy tilts his hand back and forth, explaining as best he can that it’s only more probable that Pitch is here than anywhere else. Whoever has him has hidden him very well, if he is there.

            “Hmm.” Tooth looks from the slowly turning cloud of nightmare sand to the featureless water around them. “If he is under the ocean, we can’t just swim down to collect him, can we? Did you get any hints of who was hiding him?”

            Sandy nods, the motion tight. Yes, but it’ll be better to discuss this matter anywhere but here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the first version of this I seemed to have a weird hate for contractions. I hope I've mostly solved that problem now.


	3. Tales of Pitch Black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Guardians find out who probably has Pitch, and they get into North's submarine (by the way, there's a submarine) to travel to her. On the way, they share their stories of Pitch before Jack's Easter.

            They gather in North’s library around a large table surrounded by a U of cases holding all his maps, magical and otherwise.

            Jack stares intently at the currently unrolled map, his blue eyes bright with three hundred years of remembered flights. “Okay,” he says. “I’m pretty sure we were about…here, when we found the nightmare sand.” He taps a blunt fingernail against the thick paper.

            “Impressive,” North says, nodding at him before turning to peer at the map. “Mariana Trench. Deepest spot in all the ocean. It is good hiding place. Oscar! Janet!” He calls to two of the library yetis. “Help us unroll Personages map.”

            The Personages map is hand-drawn on leather, protected by many thin wooden slats that allow it to be rolled up and clatter very loudly on the table when the yetis unroll it. “Okay.” North rubs his hands together. “Mariana Trench, Mariana Trench…” He opens his mouth to say something, but before he can speak, Oscar hands him a pair of reading glasses.

            The glasses would be necessary for almost anyone trying to read this particular map. The outlines of the continents are just barely visible, the rest of the pale leather densely covered with notes in North’s neat handwriting, in a variety of colors and languages. Many of the notes have been crossed out, and nearly all of them are linked by several lines to other locations or notes.

            “Wow, North, haven’t you ever heard of an eraser?” Bunny asks.

            “Eh…da…can see why you would ask. But want to keep history on map. Helps keep it accurate, you know?” He says distractedly, his nose only inches above the leather. “Mariana Trench…Mariana Trench…aha! No note, but one line from it…” he traces a thin violet line with his finger, slowly, so as not to confuse it with any others. The line leads him over Asia and Eastern Europe, to finally land in…

            “Greece.” Tooth folds her arms and presses her lips together. “One of them. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate dealing with the Greek Pantheon?”

            “Trust me,” says Bunny, “It can never be said too much.”

            “Maybe is coincidence, you know how map is…ah. No. Is not coincidence.” North taps the explanatory note and everyone leans in to see. “The Mariana Trench is the last known location of—”

            “Eris,” reads Tooth.

            “Goddess of Discord,” says Bunny.

            A golden apple, inscribed “To the fairest” forms above Sandy’s head. His brows draw together and he half-starts several gestures, completing none of them.

            “Um, guys?” Jack interrupts, “Could you maybe bring me up to speed here? What is this map? Who is Eris, specifically? And, seriously? The Greek Pantheon is real? How did I not know about this?”

            “Honestly, Jack, you not knowing is a good thing,” Tooth says. “It proves that they haven’t been able to interfere with humanity for at least as long as you’ve been around. And that makes humanity safer and our jobs a _lot_ easier.” She pauses. “Still, you do need more of an explanation…”

            “Tooth!” North nods at her and Jack. “You keep explaining—Bunny, Sandy, and I are going to start getting submarine ready. Yetis will lead you down when you are ready.”

            “Right.” Tooth begins again. “So, it’s not just the Greek Pantheon that’s real, it’s all of them. All the gods and spirits—well, almost all—that humanity has believed in throughout the ages. They’re not like us though. We were chosen by the Man in the Moon, and he’s been granted a…charter? Or something like that—to create beings like us. None of us have ever gotten a straight explanation, but there’s something beyond the Man in the Moon—and Mother Nature, for that matter. There’s always an outside…Anyway, though, back to the various pantheons. They’re not like us: they were formed out of human belief, but they don’t need it. All of them have power to affect humans proportional to humans’ belief in them, but they always retain their full power in dealings with other gods and spirits. So for people like Eris and the rest of the Greek Pantheon that don’t have many true believers, they can’t directly affect humanity any more. But most of them get bored easily, and so they meddle in each other’s affairs. That’s what North’s map shows. Shifting alliances, notable incidents—he tries to keep track of them so that if they ever decide to try and interfere with any of us, we have some information to fight back with.

            “I can only assume you didn’t encounter them earlier because it was clear that you were the Man in the Moon’s creature. But three hundred years though between calling and initiation—I don’t know, Jack, I’m starting to think that maybe that’s another sign that Mother Nature’s right about the balance being upset.”

            “I—we can talk about that later. What about Eris?”

            “Eris is the Greek goddess of chaos. Even though she can only affect other gods and spirits now, she hasn’t surrendered any of her original purpose. She enjoys it. What worries me about her possibly having Pitch now is that Mother Nature said that his weakness upset the balance that—as she said—he maintains with us. Upset balances are appealing to a being like Eris.” Tooth lets out a short sigh. “That help?”

            Jack nods, then laughs and shakes his head. “I’m beginning to think I need some sort of class on being a Guardian.”

            “You’re getting more of one than the rest of us did,” Tooth says, making a face.

 

***

 

            “Okay, I’ve got to ask: why the submarine? I can’t imagine you ever use it on Christmas.” Jack lightly brushes his fingers against the shining red hull of North’s ship as yetis, hindered by a great many excited elves, load it with supplies.

            “We’re going to have stowaways,” Bunny mutters to Sandy, who nods with a smile.

            “Jack, come now!” North laughs. “You ought to know! I built her for fun! Isn’t she beautiful? And now we get to take her out for more than test run! Big mission, big adventure, we will test her very limits and ours—ah, no, is very serious what we do. But just look…”

            It’s an impressive sight, Jack has to admit. Like a lot of things in the Workshop, there’s a sense of exhilarating _rightness_ about this cherry-red submarine. Jack never thought he would ever have wanted to travel this way, but seeing the _Virginia_ —as the six-foot-high gold letters on the hull declare her—he’s rapidly warming to the idea.

            “She is 40 meters, fit for crew of 25, and, of course, perfectly capable of withstanding the depths of the Trench. Not strictly possible, you know”—North winks, gesturing at the glass dome that forms the bridge—“but that is no matter.” He turns from Jack and toward the yetis. “All right everyone! We will be leaving in half an hour! Terry, you are in charge of crew now, I will be showing others around ship.”

            Sandy claps his hands and floats in through the main hatch, followed by Tooth. “You’re _sure_ this thing can make it all the way under the Arctic ice?” asks Bunny.

            “I’m sure it’s as safe as the sleigh,” Jack says, swooping behind him and pushing him through the door.

            “Safe! Hey hey hey, remember, we can’t judge what’s safe anymore—”

            North just laughs and follows everyone inside.

            “Yetis will be angry if we go into engine room now, and actually is probably best to stay out in general, though it is very beautiful—mostly magical, but lots of gears, brass, glass. Much movement, much precision. Anyway, follow me to bridge.”

            The bridge contains only a highly polished wooden ship’s wheel and a jeweled model of the globe in a brass stand on a gleaming mahogany floor. The wall separating the bridge from the rest of the ship is much busier, holding a number of displays that provide information regarding things like depth, oxygen levels, weapons targeting—“Weapons?” Jack peers at several round-cornered screens. “What kind of weapons?”

            North shrugs. “Just some torpedoes. Various sizes. Didn’t seem complete without.”

            Sandy asks if he thinks they’ll need them.

            “Who knows? With Eris, maybe.” His face becomes solemn for a moment. “Anything could happen.”

            The tour of the rest of the ship goes quickly. There’s a mess hall, with a galley staffed by yetis, a “war room” with a large round table (the Personages map resting in the corner), an infirmary, and sleeping quarters—with bunk beds.

            Sandy floats up to claim a top bunk.

            “Wow, it’s going to be like a sleepover!” Jack says, bouncing between the bunks.

            “Jack, are you kidding me? We’re going to be cramped, no matter how—admittedly stylish—these things are. Anyway, I only see four bunks.” Bunny raises an eyebrow at North.

            “This is old ship, you know. Anyway, I have captain’s cabin.”

            “Of course.” Bunny rolls his eyes.

            “Oh, Bunny, don’t be like that!” Tooth chides. “This is going to be an adventure! We’ll just do our best to fit our wings and ears in—I think it’ll be kind of fun to travel where it takes time to do so. My fairies are all ready to take charge of tooth collecting for as long as this will take—well, within limits, of course, but aside from looking for Pitch, it’s almost going to be like a vacation.”

            Sandy nods as he swings his feet over the edge of the bunk. He’s still going to be working from the submarine, but yes, this could be fun. When else do they get to hang out with each other, anyway?

            “We’re all losing it,” Bunny says. “We’re going to try and collect our apparently necessary enemy from a goddess who is probably more powerful than ever right now, oh, and if we fail we get to watch a whole lot of people die until we fade out. And yet it all somehow seems like a game.”

            “Bunny, please!” North claps him on the back. “We are Guardians. We do not fail. Especially in dealings with gods and goddesses. Only Pitch ever seemed like real danger, and we are going to all be on same side this time.”

            “By the way, how are we going to convince him of that?” Jack asks, placing his staff on a bottom bunk to claim it.

            Sandy waves his hand dismissively. It shouldn’t be that hard.

            The others look at him oddly, but before anyone can say anything, a yeti knocks on the hatch and says something to North. “Ah, good, thank you Belinda!” He turns to the others. “We are ready to sail! Follow me to bridge if you want best view.”

           

            The _Virginia_ sinks slowly from its dock in the ice cave beneath the Workshop into the hidden seas under the North Pole, setting a course for the sunny Pacific. North tells the others he thinks the journey will take three days, and they all try to settle in, the knowledge making the submarine seem not quite so large.

 

            It’s late at night on the first day, after dinner and after a couple hours of Sandy beating everyone at poker (in which they’ve been betting with embarrassing secrets), and instead of dealing, Tooth just keeps shuffling.

            “You know,” she says. “Mother Nature doesn’t know everything. She said Pitch avoided us from the end of the dark ages to the most recent battle. But that’s not true—at least, it isn’t for me—that is, my fairies. They weren’t attacked, but they did see Pitch, and Pitch saw them. I’m wondering now if it’s been the same for the rest of you.”

            Sandy nods without hesitation. He was going to tell Mother Nature that when she was there, but he had thought it best to keep the conversation brief.

            North and Bunny also nod, after a few moments of thought. Jack frowns and rests his chin in his hands. “I’m not sure. Maybe. I never saw him the way he appeared last Easter. But there were a lot of times I saw shadows that didn’t seem normal. There was this one time…I was following some paraskiers down Mont Blanc. For most of them, it was their first time. The day was perfect—sunny, blue skies, a fresh wind. Maybe a little too fresh at times—yeah, I know, but who doesn’t want to fly higher?”

            Bunny snorts.

            “Anyway, one of the inexperienced paraskiers really caught the wind, and almost got out of control. Almost. It was close. I could tell she was having a blast, that when she did manage to get back on course she was totally thrilled with how she got to show off her skills. But at the moment the wind made her sail wobble in a way she didn’t want it to, I saw all the shadows of the rocks on the mountain underneath her sort of…tense. I don’t know how else to describe it. And you know how a lot of shadows on snow look sort of blue? Not under her. They were black. And thinking about it now, maybe…Pitch Black. So I guess I might’ve seen him around, and it wasn’t like we needed to fight or anything. That skier was the one to rave the most about the experience, by the way.”

            Tooth nods thoughtfully and keeps shuffling. “How about you, Bunny?”

            “Huh, where do I begin? There’s actually…a lot. I don’t have anything like a specific incident. I wouldn’t see him on Easter, but throughout the year, when I’m taking care of hope in general? The bigger the hope, the more likely it would be that he would show up as I was leaving.

            “It sort of made sense, I suppose. I came with the hope that something would happen, and he came with the fear that it wouldn’t. I guess he prevented hope from turning into expectation that way. I never asked him. Maybe I should’ve.” Bunny folds his arms. “But that still doesn’t let him off the hook in my books for wrecking last Easter.”

            “Well, I will admit that I had open commerce with Pitch at one time,” North says. “When I was newer to being a Guardian, I did not feel like I had enough power to work all on my own. This was even before the yetis. I was facing trouble, trying to find way to keep children off naughty list. Did not have enough confidence in rewards of nice list yet! And so I thought, maybe they can be scared onto nice list. It was how things had gone when I was child! So I went to Pitch and asked him to help. He made me a nightmare creature to threaten the punishment I did not give. You have heard of Krampus, yes? It was very good at what it did.” North pauses, looking over the heads of the rest of the group. “I waited a long time for Pitch to ask for a reward in return. He never did. Maybe he only made me the Krampus because he was afraid of me. I do not know. Even then, he could be strange, taciturn. He acted like it was no big deal, but the Krampus was a fine nightmare. I think…I think he might have wanted to prove that he could still be useful, without pleading for himself. But Pitch always made me uneasy—I think he cannot help that—and as the years passed I started using the Krampus less and less. Pitch never asked me why, but I never saw him again in person after I released the Krampus to his care.”

            “You all know that I didn’t go out in the world at all for several centuries before last Easter,” begins Tooth, “but I know everything my fairies see. And they saw Pitch a lot. Not doing anything, just standing there. I suppose…he was _feeding_ in some way. A lot of children are afraid of losing their teeth,” she says matter-of-factly, and cuts the deck with more force than necessary. “He’d be there when my fairies showed up early for a string-on-the-door extraction, or at the dentist when a tooth needed to be pulled. Even perfectly normal losses, he would be there, sometimes. The children don’t know that their memories are getting preserved, after all. There’s blood, and often pain and the gift is rarely their first thought.

            “He never attacked. I suppose his presence might have increased the fear any particular child felt, but I can’t really fault him for that. There’s only one time in any person’s life where a particular loose tooth shouldn’t cause some worry.

            “What about you, Sandy?”

            Where should he begin? How can his sand convey to the Guardians the thousands of years they spent working alone, but still meeting every now and then for conversation and arguments? Games of chatrang in the starlight? Tricks played on Morpheus and Phobetor? Acerbic wit honed against silent expressions? The time when they had gone to see _The Man Who Laughs_ together? The unspoken truce they held for so many years? The times when Pitch broke it, and the times when Sandy broke it? He should have told Pitch so many things. What should he tell the Guardians? Should he tell them of how he thought they were both playing a long game, occasionally violent, even deadly, but bound to work out in the end? Should he tell them about the time when Pitch offered to shake his hand after a curious experience with the mind of an opium addict? About how when he had taken his hand he had felt such a rush at the physical contact that he refused to touch him for centuries hence, for _that_ could not be the end of the long game, could it? Gray on gold? He had thought that would upset the balance, but perhaps now it was the only thing that could correct it—oh but he must not think of that. It would be almost impossible to explain even in words.

            He will not tell them any of these things.

            Dreamsand symbols slowly form over his head. General. Clear. Dreams are rarely only good or only nightmares, he explains. Most are just strange. And every strange dream comes from him and Pitch interacting in some way.

            Tooth stops shuffling. “So many…”

            “But that means you couldn’t have been surprised when he came back to fight us,” says Jack. “And what about when you fought? If every weird dream meant that you two were meeting, wouldn’t there have been an understanding?”

            Sandy shrugs. Time, he tells them. It’s all about time. What else can he say? Time is vast. Battles are temporary. He…he may have even been planning to help Pitch recover after the battle. After a suitable amount of time. He hadn’t planned on Pitch catching the eye of any random spirits. Is that enough? Is it too much?

            “You and Pitch have known each other for a very, very long time, haven’t you?” says Tooth. “Before any of us existed. What was it like then? Did you fight then? Or…not…?”

            Sandy’s only reply is to say that he doesn’t owe them any secrets. They owe him! And now it’s time to pay up.


	4. To the Bottom of the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Guardians continue their journey in the Virginia, each lost in their own thoughts. They reach the Mariana Trench and begin their rescue of Pitch directly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How could the Guardians not know Jack was the next Guardian in this universe? Because they had gotten so wrapped up in their own work that they hadn’t been keeping very good track of newer spirits. This isn’t plot relevant, but I wanted to address the potential discrepancy between the existence of the Personages Map and the Guardian’s surprise at Jack Frost’s being chosen.

“North,” Tooth places her hand lightly on his elbow before he leaves for his cabin after the poker game. “Would it make a difference in how long our journey takes if we didn’t stay totally underwater?”

            He nods. “It would take longer, yes, if we travelled on the surface.”

            “Oh.” Tooth folds her arms. “Longer enough to cause us to fail to bring Pitch back safely?”

            “We do not know what kind of situation he is in,” North says. “I do not know.”

            “It’s just that…I know I’m not feeling what I would normally feel,” Tooth says. “But I’m still able to think what I’d normally think. And I think…even your beautiful submarine is a cage to me, when it’s away from the air.”

            “Do not worry,” North says, softer than is his norm. “We will be out from under the ice soon.”

 

            On the afternoon of the second day, Jack sits on one end of the deck, one leg hooked on a railing support. He’s not sure exactly why they bothered with a submarine if they’re going to travel on the surface the whole way, but he’s not going to complain about having more space and access to the wind, both of which always help him think.

            The endless waves before him fade from his perception as his thoughts return to Antarctica and his encounter with Pitch. Could it have gone differently? He replays the scene again and again in his mind. Was there any way to have avoided the situation they’re all in now? He turns the memory back and forth, but the answer always seems to be “no”, as long as he remained Jack and Pitch remained Pitch. Even if Pitch had been sincere about wanting a family— _and he probably was_ —Jack thinks, Pitch didn’t seem to be able to build a bridge between two people if his life depended on it.

            No, he couldn’t build bridges. But he was excellent at burning them.

            Had Pitch even understood what he was doing? After killing Sandy and wrecking Easter, did he really think Jack would have joined him? And then what?

            If Jack had been the kind of person to agree to that offer, he wouldn’t have been able to aid Pitch. Even now, he knows he just doesn’t have the patience to find out what makes Pitch tick. More importantly, he doesn’t have the patience to get Pitch to let himself be taken apart and repaired. He feels sorry for the guy, sure, but fifty thousand years—from what Sandy’s said—have given him way more issues than he would ever be able to help with. But if…if he had been older…if he had been calmer…if Pitch hadn’t been cruel to Baby Tooth…if Pitch had been calmer….

            Bunny sits on the other end of the deck, only half-enjoying the feel of the wind through his fur. His ears flatten against his skull as thoughts of Eris fill his mind. He’d met her once before. Then, he’d been strong with belief and she hadn’t seemed like much of a threat at all. In fact, she’d seemed afraid of him, running away into and through shadows as soon as she spotted him. The way she’d moved had reminded him of one of Pitch’s creatures, so he’d followed her to check if she was an escaped nightmare, and, in any case, find out what she was doing.

            She’d moved swiftly, but not anywhere near Bunny’s top speed. He followed her easily until she reached a gathering of fey and stopped. Bunny recognized the leaders of the band as Titania and Oberon, and was pleasantly surprised to see that they seemed to be reconciled to each other at the moment. The gathering had seemed to solve the mystery of the woman who moved like a nightmare: she was just another fey. Bunny had been about to leave when he noticed her moving through the crowd, whispering in ears, causing a few well-timed stumbles, stealing trinkets from some and planting them on others. As she did so, Bunny could feel her gathering power.

            He bares his teeth, remembering how, thanks to her actions, the relatively peaceful dance of that fey court had turned to a bloody battle with Titania and Oberon on opposite sides in the span of only a few hours.

            He remembers, too, how she had laughed. And just as she was about to leave, she had turned to stare directly at Bunny’s hiding place, and said loud and clear, just for his ears, “I hope I’ve made good use of my one chance to make a first impression. Eris, goddess of chaos, at no one’s service.”

            He’s worried about the Guardians facing her in their weakened state. The thing that made them weak made her stronger, and her main skill was sowing discord and strife. And, well, he and the other Guardians didn’t always get along perfectly, did they? They were going to be all too easy to crack unless they were particularly on their guards.

           

            Down in the War Room, Tooth pours over the Personages map. Members of the Greek pantheon rarely acted alone, and it’s all too likely that they’ll have to deal with allies of Eris as well as the goddess herself. She traces line after line, but so far all of Eris’ alliances seem to have been broken by her. Broken, broken, broken—maybe they’re going to get lucky and Eris will be on her own. There’s only one line left to follow, in red ink. Tooth traces it, holding her breath. Surely this one will be crossed out as well.

            It isn’t. When this note was written, Eris was owed a favor by none other than her sibling Eros. Eros, who plays dirty. Eros, who, unfortunately and undeniably, even the Guardians had to be wary of.

            A favor from Eros. Tooth frowns deeply. Though she doesn’t know the innermost thoughts of the other Guardians, she guesses enough to know that Eris could wield a favor from Eros against them with extremely discordant results. Tooth chews her bottom lip. Maybe she already had. For a mission like this, any distraction at all could be deadly. Any distraction…or delay. She presses her hands to the sides of her head. No, that can’t be, it was such a little thing, she won’t mention it. She abandons the War Room for the deck, slamming the door behind her.

           

            North runs the yeti crew through an evacuation drill. He tests them on emergency protocol for the engines. He makes one, then two, then five, then ten yetis stand back from recovery procedures and makes sure everyone knows what to do if their numbers are reduced. He makes sure that they will be able to return the _Virginia_ to the Workshop even if he and the other Guardians have to leave suddenly. At least, this is how he phrases it. He refuses to name any other reason why the Guardians would no longer be on the ship.

 

            Sandy sits cross-legged on the floor of the bridge, enjoying the rippling pattern of light and shadow formed by the thin layer of water between the glass dome and the open air. A few strands of dreamsand pass through both glass and water, but only enough to allow dreams to form. He shapes none of them himself. Today, other thoughts demand his attention.

            Thoughts of Pitch. Pitch, and his rescue, and his recovery. Should he offer to take Pitch to Dreamland to heal? The other Guardians will want a good explanation for that offer, not just vague ramblings about time. But he wouldn’t have to reveal the real reason, would he? He wouldn’t have to tell them about his feelings for Pitch—not right then, anyway. It would make sense for him to recover in Dreamland, wouldn’t it? Sandy and Pitch have almost identical abilities, so his realm would naturally be most suited to shelter and heal him. To which the other Guardians could argue that, since he and Pitch are, in power, almost identical _opposites_ , Dreamland might be the worst place to send him to get well.

            Maybe he shouldn’t even be thinking about the love he has for Pitch as a factor in the current situation at all. He’s never gotten any unambiguous sign that Pitch might want him in return.

            Want. A useless word, like most of them. Pitch admitted to wanting believers, but little else. Yet it had been more and more obvious to Sandy over the centuries and millennia that there were plenty of things Pitch _needed_ , though he never said so in words. Pitch needed someone to talk to. He needed friends. He needed someone who could reach out to the part of him that had been human and see him as more than just his duties as the Boogeyman. He needed someone to laugh with. He needed someone who could appreciate the artistry of crafting nightmares. He needed someone who would put up with him and hold on to him until he realized he needed these things.

            It was high time, Sandy felt, that he should begin to try to be that someone. And if along the way Pitch realized he also needed the soft touch of dreamsand twining around his body, so much the better.

            He laughs silently at himself, blushing a little. No, all that sort of thing was certainly in the _want_ , not _need_ , category. He’d best be careful not to get ahead of himself, and to guard against any of the skewed thinking that came from spending all of his time around humans at night.

 

            Late in the afternoon of the next day, North gathers all the Guardians in the War Room. “We are approaching Mariana Trench very quickly now. In maybe twenty minutes we will be above it. Once we get there, I will have yetis make final preparations for descent. From that point it will take about three hours to reach bottom. True, it is only a little less than seven miles, but we must go slow. I do not want to strain the magic of the _Virginia_ too much.”

            Surrounded by darkness, and with the ever-growing weight of water above the _Virginia_ , the three hours feel like years. Will they need to fight? Will Eris be willing to talk? Why exactly did she take Pitch anyway? Is Pitch really down here? Is Eris really down here still?

            On the way down, Bunny tells Jack the story of his meeting with Eris.

            Tooth tells the others the facts of what she found on the map, saving her speculations for later, or, she hopes, never.

            As they near the ocean floor, they all move to the bridge, straining their eyes against the darkness outside. The powerful spotlights on the front of the submarine offer little relief in the monotony of open water, and when silt and rocks finally appear, they seem like glorious signs that the world hasn’t been reduced to only void and the _Virginia_.

            “Sandy, are you going to try looking for Pitch again? Like you did on the surface?” Jack asks.

            Sandy nods, and signals to North to turn off the spotlights. If Eris has her palace down here, it’s possible she’ll have lights that will make their search even easier, and they’ll be easier to see if they’re not giving off any light of their own.

            North complies, and before beginning to concentrate, Sandy hears Tooth comment softly, as if she doesn’t really intend for anyone to hear, “I think this might actually be worse than the cave.”

            For her sake, Sandy hopes he’ll be able to sense something quickly, though if he can’t, there’s nothing he can do to rush things. He closes his eyes, though it makes no difference in the dark. One deep breath. Two. Three. Where are you, Pitch? Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. There. Maybe. He allows a glowing arrow to form over his head and point the way. He feels the rumble of engine strain in the floor under his feet as the craft turns ever so slightly. Yes! The change in the feeling with the movement confirms it. They are getting closer. He knows it, with the curious certainty that one has seen the last robin of fall, with the confidence that the gritty dregs in a cup of cider contain a few last drops of sweetness.

            “Hey! I think I see a light!” Jack says.

            “Good eye,” says North, slowing the sub to a crawl.

            Sandy opens his eyes to see what Jack spotted. Ahead of them, on one of the walls of the trench, a building has apparently been hewn into the rock. Faint purplish light issues from several windows, and, as North turns the spotlights on again, various architectural features, columns and arches and friezes, seemingly flung together at random, become visible.

            One of the lighted windows is separated from the others, and Sandy tells the others that he’s certain that’s where Pitch is being held. He suggests that they might as well just try the direct approach of going in and grabbing him.

            “I’m all for that,” says Bunny, “but how are we going to get in? I know that technically we don’t need to breathe—” he glances quickly at Jack, who doesn’t notice “—but we’re all kind of used to it, you know? And this far down…”

            Sandy quickly explains an alternative.

            “Will do, Sandy,” Bunny says.

            In minutes, all five of them leave the _Virginia_ inside a sphere of dreamsand. Once they’re clear of the submarine, Sandy allows their bubble to sink partway into the ocean floor so that they end up standing in the silt. Bunny closes his eyes and pictures the upper window they saw, and taps his foot on the loose mud of the ocean floor. A tunnel opens up, and even Bunny backs away from the crumbling edges. “Well, it goes all the way through into an open space,” he tells the others. “But it’s not really stable. We’d better go.” He takes a boomerang from his bandolier and glances around. “I’d appreciate if you followed close behind, for both my sake and yours.” He leaps into the tunnel, followed immediately by Jack, then Tooth, then North. Finally, Sandy enters the tunnel, keeping the crushing water out with dreamsand until he arrives in the room with the others and Bunny closes the entrance.

            Before he has a chance to look around, Sandy hears North say, “Well, this is not what I was expecting.”

            “I…guess we can wrap him up in a blanket?” Tooth says.


	5. Enter Eris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Guardians find they can't free Pitch, and Eris arrives after they try to meddle with his bonds. She explains what she wants with him. Sandy points out what her plan won't get her, and a game begins.

Confused, Sandy turns, to be greeted by the sight of Pitch. Naked. His wrists have been tied with shadowy ropes to the bedposts. Sandy’s immediate thought is that this is not the context in which he would have hoped for such a sight. Almost as soon as the thought is formed, he grits his teeth together and wishes he could knock some sense into himself. This is a serious situation, and there’s something seriously wrong with Pitch right now.

            Pitch stares at the ceiling, eyes unfocused, oblivious to the appearance of the Guardians. “My love is as a fever, longing still/For that which longer nurseth the disease,/Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,/Th’uncertain sickly appetite to please…” he murmurs to himself, full of slurring pronunciations and pauses.

            Sandy recognizes Pitch’s words as from one of Shakespeare’s dark lady sonnets and a white flash of anger and jealousy rushes through him.

            “O-kay.” Tooth steps closer to the bed. “I guess Eris already used her favor from Eros.”

            Sandy blinks. Of course! A spell is a far more logical explanation for this situation than anything else. After all, the Pitch he knew would never allow himself to become this enamored of a mere goddess.

            Responding more practically to her own suggestion, Tooth attempts to loosen the bonds on one of Pitch’s wrists, while Jack examines those on the other.

            Their hands pass through the bonds as if they weren’t even there, though they still hold Pitch solidly in place. Tooth sighs. “I guess I can’t say that’s a surprise, but I was hoping something about this would be easy.”

            Pitch inclines his head toward her, attempting to focus. “Waaaait. What are you doing here? What did you hope would be easy? Are you trying to kill me again?” He giggles. “Eris will stop you though. Sheeeeee’s the best. She rescued me from the nightmares. She’s going to make me powerful again. I looooove her.” He returns to staring at the ceiling. “My reason, the physician to my love,/Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,/Hath left me, and I desperate now approve/Desire is death, which physic did except./Past cure I am, now reason is past care,/And frantic mad with evermore unrest…”

            That’s quite enough of that. Sandy flies over to the shadow bonds. A touch of dreamsand ought to sever them, and then they can work on getting Pitch back to normal, because he certainly isn’t now.

            Pitch squints at him as he tries to manipulate the bonds. “Sandy? Yooou didn’t help me after the battle.” He raises his head, his voice suddenly sharpens, and he continues quickly: “And I thought you would.” He then lets his head fall back on the pillow and becomes just as he was before, slurring lines of poetry and not reacting to much. “My thoughts and my discourse are as madmen’s are,/At random from the truth vainly expressed;/For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,/Who art as black as hell, as dark as night….Eris is going to fiiiind yoooou…”

            “Are we sure this is a favor from Eros and not…shoot, I forgot the name I wanted,” Jack says, keeping an eye on the door to the room.

            “Dionysus?” Bunny offers.

            “That’s the one! But the moment’s gone now.”

            Whatever Bunny planned to say in reply gets swept aside as sand bursts in random patterns over Sandy’s head in frustration. He can’t undo the bonds. It’s not any kind of shadow he’s used to.

            “Same thing with my sword, Sandy, it cannot touch it,” North says with a frown.

            “It’s because Eris is sooooo talented…she told me…she told me if anyone tried to mess with these bonds, she’d know immediately. I wish she’s show up soon…I miiiiissss her.” He tangles his long legs in the sheets, his voice raw with longing. He gasps and licks his lips.

            Sandy throws his hands up in the air before pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes. He is not seeing this. He is not going to see this. He is going to strangle Eris with her own hair. How dare she! And why? This love spell has destroyed everything about Pitch except for his beauty, which, yes, is considerable, but still! If she wanted beauty, there were other beauties. And she couldn’t have wanted Pitch to love, because this _wasn’t_ Pitch.

            Before Sandy can spare any more thought to the puzzle, a woman’s laugh careens around the room like a falcon with its eyes put out

            “The Guardians! Oh, wonderful!” Eris says as she materializes from a shadowy corner of the room. She smiles as she quickly takes stock of them and finds herself the most composed.

            “I knew you’d come,” Pitch says from the bed.

            “Why of course Pitchy dear! I couldn’t ignore such important and powerful guests—though perhaps, less powerful of late?” She touches the shadows around Pitch’s wrists and they dissolve. Freed, he slides off the bed ungracefully and grips her leg, nuzzling at her thigh.

            Tooth folds her arms. “Eris, what are you doing? What could you possibly want Pitch for?”

            Eris laughs again. “Isn’t it _obvious_ what I want Pitch for, Toothy?” She runs her fingers through his hair, smirking.

            Tooth’s expression darkens. “Don’t toy with us. That’s not your real reason. If you just wanted a lover you wouldn’t have taken Pitch. There are plenty of other gods and spirits you could have chosen from that wouldn’t have brought us to your palace.”

            “Hmm, yes, but you see, it was Pitch that caught my eye. Then again,” she tosses her hair so it ripples and flows around her and Pitch, the ends caressing the back of his neck, “you _are_ right to think that I have more than one reason for keeping him in my bed.”

            There is a long pause. The Guardians glance at each other and back to Eris.

            “So…are you going to tell us?” Jack asks.

            “Why should I? It won’t make any difference in what happens later.” She looks at each of the Guardians in turn, brows high and smirk firmly in place. When she sees the anger on Sandy’s face, though, her own breaks into a grin. “Of course, what harm could it do me? Knowledge may be power, but it doesn’t make up for what you lack without Pitch.

            “It all started last Easter, as I’m sure you know. The balance tipped so wildly it drew me from all my other games—I just _had_ to see what was going on. And what did I find when I showed up? None other than Pitch Black, unconscious in the snow, dreaming of butterflies!” She laughs. “Well, _that_ was hilarious enough on its own, but not enough to hold my attention for long. As the months passed, though, and I realized that all of you, with all your fuss about rules, and duties, and order, weren’t doing anything to protect the order you were part of—weren’t doing anything to help Pitch—I started to think of how very _chaotic_ this could get. A tipped balance, that I could easily make _stay_ tipped! And it would affect the humans!” She closes her eyes and sighs. “It’s been so _long_ since I was able to do that. And now I am, _finally_ , again. You have no idea how good I feel.

            “Anyway, though, I turned the idea over and over in my mind until I decided to kidnap Pitch. I think it was the butterflies that inspired me, really. You’ve heard of chaos theory? The butterfly effect? How delicious it would be to start a reign of chaos with actual butterflies!

            “Pitch didn’t come willingly, though. Deep down he’s just a bore like all of you. Kept talking about his duties. Wasn’t interested in what I had to say about fear and chaos being natural allies. Completely incoherent, but I could have sworn he knew about the balance as well. That was altogether too dull, so I called upon my dear brother Eros for the favor he owed me.

            “And now…I have Pitch. Really, I’m not even sure the love spell is still in effect, you know. He was so very lonely for so long, and I’ve given him a place at my right hand…and between my legs.” She laughs again. “I think that’d make anyone forget their duties, don’t you? But honestly, desire was never a facet of my original plans for Pitch. I just wanted Eros’ arrow to make the kidnapping easier. Still, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t come to enjoy taking advantage of it in other ways.

            “Anyway, the important thing is that now he’ll never be inclined to leave me. If he’s separated from me, he’ll find he has enough power to return to me—my own little modification to Eros’ work—which is all he’ll want to do. And, let’s just say, I don’t think that the spell he’s under—if it even is a spell anymore—could be broken by any of you.

            “He’s mine now. To keep. Away from all humanity. No more balance. No more caution. Ever-growing chaos, until they are all gone. Until you are gone. And then, whether we like it or not, I and my brethren will be free of Earth. I have absolutely no idea what will happen then. Isn’t it delightful?”

            “Actually, no,” Jack says, maneuvering his staff so that he’s ready to attack Eris if need be.

            North nods. “Eris, we cannot let you do that. You have had your fun, now it is time to stop. Give us Pitch and we will leave you in peace.”

            Eris rolls her eyes. “Oh nooo, whatever shall I do against staff and boomerang and sword and sandwhip? Fine then.” She carefully removes Pitch’s arms from her leg. “Okay, Pitchy, you’re free to go.” A look of alarm crosses Pitch’s face as she lifts him up and tosses him at the Guardians.

            Sandy catches him in a dreamsand net and lowers him gently to the floor. As soon as he’s on solid ground, he begins to desperately crawl towards Eris.

            “NO! Please!” he cries. “My goddess, Eris! Don’t leave me, don’t let them take me! They don’t care about me the way that you do! Haven’t I always said I loved you? Oh please please please you can defeat them I’m sure you have the power! I know you wanted me, you want me still, that’s why you rescued me!”

            Frowning, Sandy sends a rope of dreamsand to loop around Pitch’s waist and hold him back.

            “NOOO! Eris, I need you!” Pitch claws at the rope and it crumbles away. The same thing happens for every dreamsand rope, every dreamsand chain, that Sandy makes. All he can do is slow Pitch’s struggle towards Eris. The other Guardians watch, stunned. Even at his most powerful, Pitch never had the ability to destroy dreamsand like that, with so little focus and effort.

            Finally, he reaches Eris, sobbing into the hem of her skirt in relief. “You weren’t really going to let them have me, my love, my flower of the night, my queen, my ocean shadow?”

            “Shh, Pitchy.” Eris bends down to pet his hair. “I was just trying to teach them a lesson.” She straightens and looks at the Guardians. “Oops. Guess you can’t have him. Eros’ spells are really quite permanent.

            “And now—I guess there really isn’t anything you can do! You could blow my palace into rubble, but I wouldn’t die. You could try binding me in some way, but that wouldn’t get you Pitch! And you don’t have anything I want any more than what I already have! You can’t beat me, and you can’t bribe me! I’ve won! So toodleoo! Have fun watching humanity die seven billion accidental deaths—I know I will!”

            Sandy steps forward, holding up one small hand, face stern. Though what he’d like to do is catch his whip around Eris’ ankle and use _her_ to pound her glorified cave into gravel, he knows she’s right when she says that won’t help. Fortunately, he has another plan.

            <You’ve _won_ , have you?> He spells out the words in dreamsand over his head, to make sure that she and everyone else can understand him. Much as he dislikes them, exact words are crucial for these kinds of situations. <Then I guess this is the very last game you can win. Against any worthy opponents, anyway.>

            The gloating smile vanishes from Eris’ face. “What do you mean, little man?”

            “It’s quite simple,” Tooth interjects, watching Sandy’s face to see if she’s understood what he’s getting at. “You know you’re more powerful now than the rest of all the gods, spirits, myths, and legends you encounter. They wouldn’t pose even a slight challenge to you in any of your ‘games’.” Sandy nods.

            Eris narrows her eyes. “What makes you think they did _before_ I had Pitch?”

            Shrugging, Tooth continues. “Maybe they didn’t. In that case, then, since you stopped being able to interact with humans, only we Guardians have ever presented a challenge to you. And now you’re trying to get rid of us.”

            “‘Trying’? I am _going_ to get rid of you.”

            “And then what? What a dull universe it will be for you then…”

            “Shut up! I’ll be free! We’ll all be free!”

            <Being free from the rules of the game just means nobody’s playing.> Sandy opens his hands, feigning sympathy. <No losers. No winners. Not even you.>

            Eris shoves Pitch away from her feet and paces back and forth, her hair writhing around her. “No losers. No winners. But freedom! Freedom from this planet, and all those humans that don’t _care_ about the power of chaos…about the power of Eris.” She stops and turns back to the Guardians, swiftly flowing closer to them. “All right then. So you’ve found something that I don’t want more than the end of humanity, but I _do_ want in addition to it. So we will play a game. We might even play many games. As many as we can, before all the lights get snuffed out!” She shines her smile at each of them, one by one. “And I will win them all.

            “But,” she says, stepping back slightly, “maybe you do need to win just one to prove you are worthy opponents…ones who can provide me with suitable amusement until the world ends. Otherwise, why shouldn’t I spend the whole time in bed with Pitch? We need never stop, you know.”

            <Name your game. We’ll win.>

            “Even if I played by my own rules, I doubt you could, little man.”

            <Even if you cheated, I know I could.>

            “Don’t pick chatrang,” Pitch murmurs, standing well back from the group, his arms crossed in front of his chest as his eyes flick back and forth between them.

            Eris ignores him. “Very well. We will play a game, and I won’t cheat. Cross my heart.” She does so, and then summons a large hourglass out of thin air. “This is the name of the game: ‘Find Pitch’.” As she completes her sentence, Pitch vanishes. “I’ve put him somewhere in my palace. You have until the hourglass empties to find him and bring him back to this room. If you win, I’ll base the next game on whoever finds him. Have fun!” She vanishes in a swirl of shadow that tips the hourglass over and starts the sand running.


	6. First Game Ends, Second Game Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Through a combination of luck and ruthlessness, Sandy wins the first game against Eris. She provides the terms of the next game, and the Guardians return to the Pole. Pitch is...very much not himself.

The sand seems to flow preternaturally quickly from the upper bulb to the lower.

            “Well I guess she just threw you into a briar patch, didn’t she Sandy? This is going to be easy for you, right?” Jack asks.

            Maybe not, he tells them. Before, she wasn’t hiding Pitch specifically. Now, she’s making a point to hide him, and most of what makes him Pitch is being smothered by that horrible love spell.

            “All right,” says North. “Still is serious situation. Should we go back to _Virginia_ to get yetis and elves to help? More eyes, more chances to find?”

            Sandy shakes his head. No, there’s no time. They need to split up and start searching _now_.

            The others nod, and they hurry out into the hallway. They split up as soon as it branches, running down twisting corridors, barging into room after room, tossing curtains aside, peering under beds, throwing open trunks.

            Sandy, on the other hand, gives up this mode of investigation almost at once. There’s only one person who knows where Pitch is now, and that person is Eris. So he’s going to ask her. There’s no rule that says they have to find Pitch by just stumbling across him.

            He zips through the palace towards where they had seen the other lighted rooms from the submarine. As he expects, one of these is a throne room, and another is a room where Eris’ scrying pool is. But is she here? Sandy floods the chambers with dreamsand, and is rewarded by sensing Eris almost nod off. He rushes to the shadow by the throne and pulls her out by a handful of hair.

            Clearly not prepared for this, she’s thrown off-balance for a few crucial moments, giving Sandy time to wrap dreamsand whips around her neck and wrists. They hold her as they should—the power to escape them only belongs to Pitch, and only then, thanks to the spell.

            “Sandy!” she says, trying to act cool and collected. “I thought you of all people would be looking for Pitch now.”

            _I am_. He shortens the whips so she’s forced to kneel and look him in the eye. _You know where he is. So I thought I’d ask you._

            “Well, I’m not going to tell you! Really Sandy, what could you do?”

            He raises an eyebrow at her. _Do you want to test the limits of what dreamsand can do?_

            She laughs. “Really? Oh, _Sandy_ , threats don’t suit you at all! I know very well you can only create sweet dreams.”

            _Note the whips that are already holding you, Eris._ He tightens the one at her neck. _You’d be surprised at what some humans consider sweet._

            “Fine then,” she chokes out. “Do your worst. I still won’t tell you. You’re still going to lose Pitch. I can’t die, and I’d do anything to win.”

            She’s right. _What if I played a game with you for the whereabouts of Pitch?_

            “That’s getting a little complicated, isn’t it, Sandy?” She twists and turns in her bonds, her hair flowing wildly in agitation. It whips around to hit Sandy in the face, and as it does so, Sandy suddenly realizes where Pitch is. Eris wouldn’t have wanted to undo the spell that prevents him from being separated from her for the sake of the game—the Guardians probably would have just taken Pitch if they had found they could. He adds dreamsand ropes around her ankles and links all the bonds to the throne. He needs two hands for this, even if relying on mere stone to anchor her means he’ll have to work fast. “Hey! What are you doing?”

            Sandy places his finger to his lips and adds even more bonds. She needs to stay still. Finally, once she’s almost entirely covered in dreamsand, she doesn’t move, save for her hair. He binds it with dreamsand into two hanks, chooses one, and divides it in two again. He chooses one of these smaller chunks of hair, and repeats the process over and over again, until only two strands of hair remain.

            All the while, Eris screams at him to stop. The indignity! He’s cheating! She can’t be hiding Pitch on her! But she needn’t scream any longer. He’s almost done. He selects one of the final two hairs and pulls it from her scalp. She screeches.

            “How did you know? HOW?!”

            Sandy smiles but doesn’t say. _I told you I’d win, and I don’t like lying._ He releases her from the dreamsand and steps back, coiling the strand of hair around his hand.

            “Well, we’ll see if you can get him back to the hourglass room on time, then,” Eris says, pulling an image of the device up from her pool. “Time is short.” With a flick of her wrist, she changes the hair Sandy has grasped in his hands back into Pitch, still naked. For a moment, he’s flustered, wanting to memorize the sudden feel of Pitch’s skin, but he hasn’t won yet. In an instant, he binds Eris again, despite her indignant protests. He’s not going to forget what just worked so easily, and it wouldn’t do to have separation anxiety ruin the game now. He drags them both back to the room where the Guardians found Pitch, making sure to touch his feet to the floor just before the last grains of sand fall.

            He smirks at Eris. _Tell them._

            “Ugh. Fine.” She clears her throat, and when she next speaks, her voice echoes through the palace. “Guardians. Time is up. You haven’t found Pitch!” Sandy glares at her. “But Sandy has,” she continues grudgingly. “Come back to the first room to hear the next game.”

            Finally, Sandy releases her. She stands up, smoothing her dress, shaking her hair out to erase Sandy’s ministrations.

            Jack leads the group as they reenter the room. “Way to go Sandy! I knew you could do it. All right, now what do we have to do?” He grins at Eris, who curls her lip at him.

            She turns back to Sandy, a considering look on her face. “My little mute Sandman. What would you say to part of this next game’s rules being that you couldn’t even spell words with your dreamsand?”

            Sandy rolls his eyes and nods. Of course he’d abide by that rule. He doesn’t like spelling things out anyway. Even when Eris laughs he’s not overly concerned by that stricture.

            “Well then. How about I release Pitch from the compulsion to always be at my side for…three days.” More laughter. “And you have until then to break the spell he’s under.”

            “Has living underwater gone to your head or something?” Jack interrupts. “I’ve watched this movie with Sophie.”

            Eris glares at him. “There _are_ important differences. Anyway, I like much older stories. Don’t you Sandy? You must know them all. So this is how it will be. Sandy can’t spell out words to communicate with anyone. Pitch won’t be under _my_ magical compulsion to be at my side. Eros’ spell still might affect how willing he is to stay with you. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. You all will have three days with which to try to break that spell. _Alternatively_ , you can figure out what story I’ve put Pitch in, and free him in the way the story tells you to, if you can. If you do that, I won’t take him back.

            “With that second option you’ll have quite the time getting him to do his job with all his attention still devoted to me, but it’s all I’m going to offer.”

            “And you’re not going to give us any hints as to the story, I presume?” Tooth asks.

            “Of course not! I already gave you two ways to win. Now, those are the rules. Do we have a deal?”

            “Cross your heart,” says Bunny.

            “Cross my heart.” She kneels down to where Pitch lies on the floor, gazing up at her, terrified. “All right Pitchy, time for a little vacation. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, you know.”

            The look of terror leaves his eyes, but the devotion remains. “I will be truly astonished to see how much fonder my heart can grow with any absence, my love.”

            “Right! Good.” North picks a sheet up off the bed, wraps Pitch in it, and hoists him over his shoulder. “See you later, Eris.”

            She frowns. “You’re not taking this seriously enough.”

            “That is why I picked Pitch up. Okay. Wait. Now I am feeling little nervous. Better?” North asks.

            “Eris, why are you letting them do this to me?” Pitch whines.

            “Ugh!” She throws her hands in the air. “I’ll be in your Workshop in three days, North. Whether you’re ready or not.” With a swirl of darkness, she vanishes.

            “Eris…” Pitch hangs his head against North’s back.

            “We will take snowglobe back to _Virginia_ and then to Workshop,” North says. “I do not think spending time on the submarine will help us.”

 

***

 

Day 1

 

            Back at the Workshop, Pitch gains enough focus to recreate his ordinary shadow clothing, but otherwise doesn’t become more rational.

            At first, it’s funny. Jack and Bunny voluntarily take on Pitch-watching duty just to listen to the things coming out of his mouth. “Bunny,” he says, “the gray in your fur reminds me of the subtle shade of Eris’ skin. Wouldn’t you agree that she is the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen? I don’t know how I’m going to survive these next three days. I long for her, my one, my only, so powerful, so talented—won’t you please untie these bonds so I can go to her?”

            “Sorry mate, no can do,” Bunny says, sipping on a mug of hot chocolate. The look of pain and indignation on Pitch’s face is most gratifying.

            “Maybe we should record this,” Jack says. “Can you _imagine_ his face if he sees this after the spell is broken?”

            “You won’t break the spell!” Pitch cries. “There is no spell! I love her with all my heart! I wouldn’t expect a teenager to understand! What we have is beautiful! You wouldn’t get in the way of true love, would you? After all the loneliness I endured? Just loosen one wrist, Jack, no one else has to know.”

            “Pitch, I’m sitting right here.” Bunny rolls his eyes.

            Pitch turns his head back and squints at Bunny. “Oh. Well, you know about loneliness too. Please, just let me get back to Eris.”

            “Has it ever occurred to you that you might have more to do than obsess over Eris?” Jack asks, pulling up a chair and sitting backwards in it.

            “Maybe once…but none of that can compare to her. Oh, let me describe to you her perfections, her beauties…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They can use snowglobes to leave Eris' palace because North knows where they're going. At least that's how I've decided they work.


	7. A Hint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eros shows up at the Workshop and makes a nuisance of themselves, but gives an important hint about breaking the spell on Pitch. Sandy takes up Pitch-watching duty, and some yetis just try to do their jobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eros' butterfly wings come from mythology. They're "they", though because the rest of their appearance and manner is based off of Desire of the Endless. However, while Gaiman's Desire character is "it", and so was Eros here in the kinkmeme version, I didn't think that seemed right anymore, so I changed the pronouns. I think I caught them all, but if not, the reason for the confusion is my poor editing and the above stated.

            In the library, one of the yetis pulls North away from his discussion with Tooth and Sandy to tell him something. When he returns to the group, he beams at them.

            “Pitch may still be under spell, but already things are better with him free from trench! Olga just told me that number of believers remained steady this morning, and naughty list shrunk.”

            “That’s wonderful! At least we won’t have to worry about that as we’re trying to meet Eris’ challenge,” Tooth says.

            Sandy nods. Returning to their previous conversation, he suggests again that it might be easier just to break the spell rather than to figure out the story Eris thinks they’re in.

            “Maybe,” says North. “But just as there are thousands upon thousands of stories, there are thousands and thousands of ways to break spells.”

            But we know who cast this one, Sandy points out. Shouldn’t that help narrow it down?

            “Yes, it should,” says a seductive, unfamiliar voice. The three wheel around in alarm to find a strange being leaning against one of the library tables. Their flowing garments reveal a startlingly extensive amount of their beautiful body, yet somehow manage to keep the being’s sex a complete mystery. A pair of butterfly wings sprouts from their back. Their face is perfectly androgynous, and perfectly beautiful, framed by shining black curls that fall to their shoulders.

            “Eros,” says Tooth.

            “I’m glad to see you still recognize me,” they say, smirking.

            “How did you get in here?” North asks, eyes narrowed.

            Eros laughs. “How did I get in here? How could you have kept me out?” They turn fully to North. “You poor thing. She has no idea. Would you like an arrow? I’ll give you one if you promise to do me a favor in the future.”

            North’s expression turns stormy. “The day I considered such methods would be the day I knew myself to truly be unworthy of her. Now! Is time to state your business or leave.”

            “Oh come now! Don’t be rude. I _was_ going to help—”

            “But now you’re just going to stick around and make a nuisance of yourself?” Tooth asks. “I see that you aren’t leaving.”

            “Don’t rush me darling. Oh, by the way, his heart belongs to another. Too bad, so sad. Would _you_ like me to help you?”

            “No Eros, I wouldn’t. I’m a grown spirit. I have an important job that I love. I’ll get over this infatuation soon enough.”

            “Oh…will you?”

            In an instant, North stands between them, pointing his swords at Eros. “Do not try anything funny, archer. Otherwise you will live to regret it…and you won’t want to.”

            Eros only laughs again. “Gods, it’s like a neon sign. But seriously, though. I could help you all.”

            “Unless you have something to say about the love spell you put on Pitch, we’re not interested,” Tooth says, glancing at North curiously.

            “Well I suppose that _is_ why I decided to visit on this _particular_ day,” they say, tossing their hair and jumping up to perch on the table top. “Yes, I owed Eris a favor, and I let her use it on Pitch. But to be quite honest, I don’t like her. I mean, I don’t like any of you either, but all you do is insist on being in charge of your own lives. Eris…

            “Here’s a story I like: Boy meets girl. I like how they look together, so I send an arrow for the boy into the girl’s heart, and an arrow for the girl into the boy’s heart. They fall in love and live happily ever after.

            “Here’s a story Eris likes: Boy meets girl, etc. Boy turns out to be a were-crocodile. Or girl gets struck by lightning. Or any of a number of hideously unlikely things which statistically, I suppose, must happen to _someone_ , but they don’t have to happen to my people! It’s how I ended up owing her a favor, actually. Just let that poor kitsune alone for five minutes, I said. Just because she’s a trickster doesn’t mean she doesn’t want a steady lover for a while. She’s not a version of you.” Eros frowns thoughtfully for a moment before blinking and shaking off their reverie. “It was extortion.

            “Anyway, that wouldn’t be enough to get me to help you, though. But Eris let it slip when I was preparing the arrow for her that she didn’t actually desire Pitch! I—just calling it to mind makes me angry all over again.”

            “Well, she seemed to when we showed up in her lair,” Tooth points out.

            Eros waves their hand dismissively. “That’s not real desire. It’s convenient for her to have sex with him, so she does. Also I think there’s some sort of narcissism/problems in the ol’ family shrub thing going on there, since dear mommy is Nyx, personification of night—the point here is that she never longed, never pined, never yearned for him. She never stayed up all night in torment for his sake, wondering if he ever thought of her. She never found herself waking, flushed and panting, from secret dreams where his fingers traced lines of fire on her skin. She never thought of throwing away everything she was, everything she had, for his sake.

            “ _That_ is what should be behind a bargain for one of my arrows.

            “So basically I don’t think she should get to reap the benefits of it for very long. And I have come to give you a hint.” Their eyes linger a moment on Sandy at the word “you”.

            “The arrow I gave her was one of my most ordinary. The way to break the enchantment it’s put Pitch under is very simple. Any child would know it.”

            “We should ask Jack, then,” says Tooth. “He spends the most time with children.” North nods.

            “Now,” he says, “is that all, Eros?”

            “Just a second,” they say, holding up one slender hand and hopping off the table to crouch in front of Sandy, who signs something to them too quickly for the other Guardians to decipher. “Just between you and me, yes.” More symbols. “It pains me to say it, but you won’t need one.” Yet more symbols. “Well if I were you I’d make it as dramatic as possible and make sure Eris sees.” Sandy smiles at them, nods, and winks.

            Tooth is about to ask Sandy what that was all about, when Jack skips into the library looking exasperated. “Is anyone else willing to take on Pitch-sitting duty? At first it was kind of funny to listen to fifty shades of gray over there go on about Eris, but I am entirely over that. Hey—who’s that?”

            “Eros, god of love,” Tooth explains. “And I wouldn’t recommend conversing with them.”

            “That must be Jack Frost!” They declare, ignoring Tooth. “You’re the worst case I’ve seen yet in this Workshop. You don’t even dare to _hope_ your desires are reciprocated.”

            “What’re they talking about?” Jack asks, reflexively placing his staff between himself and Eros.

            Tooth flutters over to him. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. I can sit with Pitch for a while. Eros gave us a hint on how to break the spell, and we think you can help us figure it out. Anyway,” she glances back at Eros, “they were just leaving.”

            “You all are _no_ fun,” Eros says, flexing their wings.

            “Excuse me,” begins Jack, but Sandy waves at him to calm down. He turns to Eros. We’ll be alright, he tells them. You can come back for the finale if you want.

            “Oooh, goody! Eris will be _so_ pissed! Well, see you all later! And North, seriously, just _say_ something. Okay! Okay, I’m leaving now.” Between one breath and the next, they vanish into thin air.

            “Sandy, did you have to invite them back here?” North rubs his hand over his face.

            Sandy shrugs. It was the fastest way to get them to leave.

            “Well, I hope you have another plan for getting them to leave two days from now. I do not know if you understand, but Eros is very dangerous to most of us.”

            Sandy nods—yes, yes, I know. Of all absurd situations! If North thought that he alone among the Guardians was immune to Eros’ influence—well, the next few days were going to be strange for everybody.

            “So what was the hint?” Jack asks, leaning on his staff.

            “Eros said that breaking the spell on Pitch would be very simple. That it is a solution any child would know. Since you spend most time around children, we thought you might know,” Tooth explains.

            “Huh.” Jack looks thoughtful. “Breaking spells. If they were talking about modern kids, there’s one solution that instantly came to mind, but while it might be simple in theory, it might also be practically impossible.”

            “What is it?” North’s eyes shine bright with the possibility of a challenge.

            “Well, it’s the thing in all the fairy tale movies they watch. True love’s kiss.”

            “Ach!” North throws his hands in the air in exasperation. “Of course. You are probably right, too. Just like Eros to give us hint we cannot use. We will have to find story to win instead, and thanks to Eros we know spell will never actually be broken.”

            “Let’s not be too hasty,” Jack says. “Maybe Pitch does have a true love out there somewhere.”

            North looks at him skeptically. “Jack, listen to what you are saying. True love. Of the Boogeyman.”

            “There was that woman who married the Berlin Wall…I’m just saying, stranger things have happened.”

            North shakes his head. “In any case I doubt we will find that person in next two days. Oh, what a circus if we win and then still have to break spell! Have to contact all the other spirits, do we send cards? ‘Come to North Pole if you think you are Boogeyman’s true love’. Elves will get caught up in excitement and try to kiss everyone, is bad enough with mistletoe…Sandy, do not laugh, is very serious.”

            I’ll take Pitch to Dreamland after we win him from Eris with the story, he tells North. You won’t need to send out ads for Pitch’s true love. _Mostly_ , he thinks, _because that person is standing right in front of you_.

            “All right, all right. We still need to find story though.”

            They won’t find it, Sandy knows, because he’s pretty sure that knowing the story they’re in depends on knowing that he’s in love with Pitch. Still, as long as it keeps them all busy in the library…

            Sandy tells Jack, Tooth, and North that he’ll be glad to take on Pitch-sitting duty until Eris shows up.

            “Aw, Sandy, you don’t have to do that, really, he’s insufferable. We can take turns,” Jack says.

            “And I already volunteered for the next shift,” says Tooth.

            But it only makes sense, Sandy explains. The other Guardians need to look through the library to find possible stories, but he only needs to look through his memory. Plus, who better than he to watch for any escape attempts?

            “Ok, Sandy,” North agrees. “But if you cannot take any more do not hesitate to ask me to take over for a while.”

            “Or me,” Tooth says.

            “Same here,” says Jack. “But maybe ask one of them first? They haven’t had to deal with him yet.”

            Sandy raises his eyebrows and nods at him before floating off towards Pitch’s room.

 

            After sends Bunny on his way, he conjures up a comfortable dreamsand chair and settles down next to the bed Pitch is bound to. Really, it’s kind of disappointing, having all this unpleasantness suddenly associated with Pitch tied to the bed. He’s had to scrap many of the ideas he’d been crafting for so long regarding what he would do if Pitch reciprocated his feelings.

            Pitch tilts his head over to look at Sandy. “You were the one who took me away from Eris in the first game. I guess the others can be sure you’re not going to help me escape.”

            Sandy nods, and Pitch sighs. “You know, the gold of your robes reminds me of Eris’ eyes. They’re what I like best about her.”

            Sandy thinks he shouldn’t let his face contort in anger like that. It’s not natural for him and makes his face hurt.

            “Don’t look at me like that. She’s really wonderful, you know. And I can’t stop talking about her. I think it’s literally impossible. I guess that’s what being in love is like. She doesn’t act like I do though. Maybe I made her angry somehow! Oh, I would tear down the moon from the sky if it would make her happy again…”

            _This is going to be a problem_ , Sandy thinks. He won’t be patient enough to wait to taunt Eris if the alternative is listening to Pitch being lovestruck with someone other than him for the next—he checks the clock on the wall—fifty-five hours. And knowing Pitch, he _will_ talk constantly that entire time.

            He snaps his fingers in Pitch’s face. What if you were singing? He signs to him.

            Pitch looks confused for a moment. “I don’t really feel like singing without my Eris to inspire me.”

            Sandy thinks quickly. She’d want you to keep your spirits up in captivity, he signs.

            “Oh, yes, you’re right. She’d want me to be strong. I can’t show weakness to you or anyone. You’re so helpful…yes, this will definitely help me prove to Eris that I’m the best man for her. But where are we going to get the music?”

 

            A dreamsand paper airplane unfolds itself on North’s desk in the library. The image on it is an iPod, cartoonishly bursting with music notes, paired with a set of speakers, followed by a question mark.

 

            Minutes later, a yeti stops by Pitch’s room with the music player and speakers and hands them to Sandy, who nods in thanks. He knew North would have a few of these lying around, and since it’s North’s, he’ll be able to find any song he wants on it.

           

            Ethel bobs her furry head up and down as she carries a box of paint through the shortcut North’s guest wing. Everyone on the shop floor knows that Cary just gave the Sandman an iPod, and she finds she rather likes his taste in music, if she does say so herself. The Boogeyman is singing along, however, but she guesses that can’t be helped. Somehow it’s all Guardian business.

 

_We will find you_  
Acting on your best behaviour   
Turn your back on mother nature   
Everybody wants to rule the world

 

            Several hours later, Vlad and Dorcas take the same shortcut. They can’t help but glance through the open door of Pitch’s room curiously when they hear the song that’s playing. When they do, they see that Pitch is still tethered by golden ropes, but he’s standing now, dramatically singing into a dreamsand microphone, while Sandy floats nearby, intently playing a dreamsand guitar.

 

_Shot through the heart and you’re to blame_

_You give love a bad name_

 

            Vlad and Dorcas raise their eyebrows at each other before moving on unnoticed. A little way down the hallway, Dorcas speaks. “You know, I don’t think I really understand Sandman.”

            Vlad shrugs. “I don’t think I understand any of the Guardians. But North offers way more benefits than the Weekly World News.”

            “True that,” says Dorcas. “And it beats scaring hikers.”


	8. A Dream/Sandy Finds The Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy continues to keep watch over Pitch, who has a dream. He comes up with what he thinks is a really good guess for the story part of Eris' challenge, and the Guardians try to Eris-proof the Workshop.

Pitch looks almost normal, Sandy thinks, as he ponders on next move in their chess game. Naturally, he’s trying to win for Eris and he’s also losing badly, but if Sandy just looks at his face he can ignore that. He can enjoy seeing his eyes narrowed in that familiar way, his hairless brows drawn in, and pretend that this game is going to end in a draw, as theirs always do.

            With long, elegant fingers, Pitch slowly moves one of his remaining pawns, frowning at the board after he does so. “I must not be feeling like myself today, Sandy. When we played before, we always tied, didn’t we? Eris would be so disappointed in me right now.”

            Sandy waves the comment away. It wouldn’t matter to Eris, he signs. Chess has too many rules for her to like it. He’d like to continue the conversation rather than the game, begin talking to Pitch about how they always tied because it was a game equally unsuited to either of them as well, start resurrecting memories of their interactions over the centuries. He’d like to be able to just talk with Pitch about anything, but that’s not going to be what happens today, because the love spell forces every topic of conversation back to Eris.

            Sometimes, Pitch seems to notice this, and be troubled by it. He likes to think of himself as someone worthy of Eris as the spell makes him think of her, and his failure to change the subject and prove his wit and intelligence troubles that spell-induced self-image.

 

***

 

            Occasionally, the way Pitch talks about Eris makes Sandy wonder if the love spell is weakening.

            “What I like best about being with her is when she just holds me close and doesn’t say a word. Just being quiet with the one you love…I’d wanted that for so long.”

            “What I find amazing about Eris is the way she calls all her strange creatures from her roomful of constellations. I’ve always admired that kind of creativity, and always been envious of it. Those things she makes, they shine like the stars. So I guess it only makes sense that she ignores anything I make out of nightmare sand—it’s not very beautiful, after all. I mean, not to other people. If she could maybe say something about the work that went into my nightmares though, that would be nice. Of course she doesn’t need to! It’s just that I want to be able to make something that I know she likes, and the nightmare sand is all I have to work with…”

            Can he really be talking about _Eris_ in these moments?

 

***

 

            On the evening of the second day, Sandy knows he can’t make Pitch stay awake like he did the first night. He’s obviously exhausted, and no matter what Sandy’s feelings about his probable dreams might be, how could he be so cruel as to keep anyone, especially Pitch, from sleep? With a dusting of dreamsand, Pitch is out for the night, and Sandy braces himself to see it form into Eris’ shape.

            To Sandy’s surprise and interest, it doesn’t—at least not at first.

            Pitch dreams of himself moving confident and powerful through the night, frightening people by the dozen, people who are ultimately glad for the thrill; dreams of himself full of the power their fear gives him and dancing for joy. Then, the scene of ordinary human houses dissolves around him, and for an instant Sandy sees what appears to be an image of all the Guardians sitting at a table, with Pitch approaching the chair that remains. At this moment though, that vision crudely shapes itself into that of Eris. Her dreamsand image stutters as it moves, and is blurry compared with Pitch’s dream image of himself. Sandy watches only long enough to see the images kiss before looking away. He can tell Pitch is dreaming without actually watching.

            As he sends out more strands of dreamsand to other sleepers in the world, he realizes that it’s not just that Pitch is dreaming of Eris that bothers him—it’s also that the work is so crude. After all, he’s watched enough dreams to know that what goes on in the minds of dreamers is very often not what they truly desire. But Eros’ spell simplifies all that into rather mechanical-seeming erotica—at least that he can tell without looking. But there’s no subtlety of feeling present in Pitch’s mind that he can sense. Not that it still isn’t somewhat distracting, but all interest dies for Sandy when he thinks of turning around to see the dream-Pitch having sex with that ghostly Eris. When she formed, she barely seemed physical. Was this the kind of dream those under Eros’ spells were meant to be satisfied with? And they had called themselves a god.

            At least when Pitch corrupted his dreamsand the results still had life in them.

 

***

 

            All through the night, Sandy sets his mind to the problem of the story. He’d like to see Eris defeated in both of the conditions she set, but nothing Sandy can come up with fits their situation as closely as he assumes it should.

            Around dawn, though, it comes to him. Eris didn’t actually have a story in mind when she set that challenge. She’s going to make the Guardians guess, and react by treating Pitch in the way the story demanded. Yes, that must be it. She was quick-thinking enough to do something like that, and it would fit with her chaotic nature. She’d be pleased to attack the Guardians with a weapon they chose themselves.

            Making sure Pitch will stay asleep for a little while longer, he goes down to the library. None of the other Guardians have slept, but he’s glad to see that they don’t look as if they’ve needed it. Having Pitch at the Workshop has helped a great deal—even moreso than if he had been in his lair, Sandy guesses. Guardian magic flows very easily from the North Pole to the rest of the world.

            “Hi Sandy!” Tooth looks up from a large book of forgotten fairy tales. There’s a never-emptying teapot holding hot, unsweetened mint tea near her elbow, which causes Sandy to smile a little, while still thinking, _that doesn’t count as saying something_.

            After greeting him, however, her face falls. “We’re not coming up with anything. All our candidates have enough of a difference from this situation that we can’t narrow it down. When Eris shows up we’re going to have to just pick one, and get ready to fight.”

            North nods. “Is not best option, but Tooth had idea that will solve immediate problem. If we can keep Eris here, we can keep Pitch here. We cannot keep him away from her when she reactivates her spell, so we have to bind her. Maybe her chaos will not cause too many problems this coming Christmas, toy production will probably be still slightly down from normal, will be possible to deal with more random accidents. I do not like it though, could put the yetis in danger. But if Pitch is not free he must at least not be separated from humanity.”

            “As soon as Easter’s over, I promise I’ll take them off your hands for a few months.” Bunny’s tone is solemn. “Crikey, though, if this isn’t the _last_ problem I wanted to deal with for all eternity.”

            Sandy raises his hand for attention. He tells them he thinks he’s got a pretty good guess for the story. Will they agree to let him tell his guess to Eris?

            “Why not?” Jack shrugs, closing the volume in front of him and stretching. He looks at the others. “I’m sure it’s at least as good as any of our guesses.”

            “But you’re not allowed to use sand-writing right now,” Tooth reminds him. “Even if you’re right, what if Eris deliberately misinterprets what you say?”

            Leave that to me, Sandy tells them. I’m sure she’ll understand.

            “Cool.” Jack sighs. “Finally. No more books for a while. Now what? We’ve got, what, twelve hours or so? How about karaoke? I could tell the yetis were having fun up in the corridor two nights ago—is that a new Guardian power for me? Anyway, I thought I was going to go nuts not being able to join them.”

            “Ach, they are not supposed to use that shortcut!” North stands up. “They have pneumatic tube system to avoid that. Is probably broken, and they did not tell me. Why? I just want to modernize things a little, does not mean I will stop taking care of any of them—excuse me, I have to go deal with this.”

            “So no karaoke?” Jack asks.

            Bunny rolls his eyes and nods at him. “What we probably should do is try to Eris-proof the Workshop as much as we can.”

            “Da!” North says as he leaves the library for the main workshop floor. “Wait for me in kitchen, help yourselves to anything. Will be back soon.”

            They all leave the library, but Sandy splits off from the others when they head toward the kitchen.

            Can’t leave Pitch alone for long, he explains. Dangerous. _Now there’s a statement that could have been made a lot sooner_ , he thinks wryly.

 

***

 

            About an hour before Eris is scheduled to show up, North has Sandy bring Pitch out from his room and down to the globe room. The yetis have been evacuated, and all the hallways are getting sealed with the combined magic of the Guardians. Eris shouldn’t be able to leave the globe room when she shows up, at least not without leaving the Workshop.

            “Okay.” North claps his hands. “Now we wait.”

            “I hope Eris doesn’t think that I didn’t miss her because I don’t look broken,” Pitch says. “You’ll help me explain, won’t you, Sandy? That I wanted to prove how strong I was even while being held captive? I don’t think she’ll mind that you helped.”

            Jack groans. “Two days was not enough to recover from all that Eris-talk.”

            “Your envy is unbecoming, Jack. With that attitude you’ll never gain a lover even one-tenth as incredible as Eris.”

            “Envy? Seriously Pitch, enough is enough. Eris is—”

            “Aw, calm down Jack. This will be over soon enough,” Bunny says, glancing at the snowflakes that have started falling inside the globe room.

            “Huh? Wait, I’m not doing that.”

            “Oh, not _now_.” Tooth flutters back and forth nervously, glancing around in all directions as the snow begins to fall more heavily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really like Tooth's "fuck you" solution to the problem. Yeah, it's difficult to get ready to keep a goddess of chaos imprisoned forever, but if Eris won't play nice...sorry!


	9. The Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy claims a story for Pitch, and does what he has to to claim Pitch within that story.

            It’s almost a relief when the snow coalesces into Mother Nature, appearing as she did just before she left the Workshop nearly a week ago. “Greetings, Guardians,” she says, turning and nodding at them. “And Pitch. I am glad you managed to find him. I have been able to tell that his recovery is aiding in humanity’s recovery, but something still seems strange. The recovery appears to have reached a plateau. None of you are trying to hold him back, are you? I would think you would be more sensible than that by now. I will not be pleased if I discover this to be the case.”

            “Mother Nature, Pitch was very weak when we found him, is going to take a lot of work to get him back to normal, maybe plateau is normal? After all, we have never dealt with a situation like this before,” North offers in explanation.

            Mother Nature’s icy face begins to soften in understanding as she slowly nods, but before the tension is diffused, Pitch speaks, undoing North’s efforts at damage control.

            He sighs deeply. “Even so still, the lustrous black of your hair reminds me of _her_ hair, waving hypnotically like anemones in the ocean’s currents, flowing out like ink dropped into springwater…”

            Mother Nature raises her eyebrows and looks around at the rest of the Guardians, all of whom try to avoid her gaze, save for Sandy, who smiles and shrugs. “Who, exactly, is _she_?”

            Pitch bursts in with a reply before anyone can think to form a sensible answer. “She is Eris! Goddess of my heart, she saved me from my lair and kept me safe in her palace beneath the sea. She is my one, my only, a being of such glorious beauty and generosity that I myself wonder how I am not smitten dead in her presence! She has sent me away from her for a short time to test my devotion, and I can only hope I have done myself credit as her lover. I—”

            “Enough,” Mother Nature says sharply. “Guardians. Are you telling me that you, in fact, let Pitch grow so weak that he was able to be captured by a goddess?”

            “You said yourself that you could tell he was extremely weak when you told us to find him!” Bunny interjects.

            “I knew he was weak. I assumed that he had disappeared from the world in a misguided attempt to regain his strength. I had no idea that he had fallen so low as to be taken in thrall by another spirit. Think how neglected he must have become! Even you, Bunny, at your lowest point, would not have been able to be taken in by a being such as Eris. You know that.”

            “Excuse me, Mother Nature, but ah—is not just matter of being in thrall to Eris,” North begins to explain. “Is problem because well, as you say, restoration of Pitch is human problem, and, as you say, he is supposed to be Guardian, so following logic, he was human once, like rest of us. Okay. So gods and goddesses manipulate humans, but no belief, they cannot do that anymore, right? But they can manipulate each other, and other spirits, and it makes sense that they would be pretty good at affecting those who _used_ to be human, even when we are at our full power.”

            “North, do be a little clearer.”

            Sandy waves to get Mother Nature’s attention and quickly explains things to her. In her presence the whole situation seems a little absurd, and he’s glad to save anyone else the trouble of saying it out loud. He tells her that Pitch _was_ resisting Eris at first, but she got help from Eros—that’s what North is saying—Eros’ powers are still very effective among them, since they were once human. And now they’re playing a game to free Pitch and break the spell he’s under.

            Mother Nature sighs in disgust when Sandy’s done telling her how things stand. “This is ridiculous. Eros? Playing games? Again, the fate of humanity is at stake here. This is not a folktale.” She shakes her head. “Humanity! If I could take Pitch away from all this to recover somewhere safely, I would. But you, once-human and dealing with human deities, have embroiled him in a net that actually has some binding power to it. If I take him away now, I’ll be removing him from some part of his humanity—that which is absolutely vital for him to perform his role properly once he recovers!”

            “We do have a backup plan,” Tooth says quietly. “It’s not like we were going to let Eris take Pitch away again.”

            “But he can’t do his job under this stupid spell! He’ll never be able to! True love’s kiss! True love! He’s not a swan! Maybe it would be better for him to be free and lose some humanity rather than remain in this suppressed state for all time.”

            “Why don’t you hold off on that and wait and see if we win?” Jack ventures. “I mean, we could. Sandy was pretty confident earlier. You won’t have to wait long. Eris is supposed to show up any minute now.”

            Mother Nature frowns. “I very much doubt you can win either of the bizarre bets you made with Eris. But I will wait, because a few minutes or hours will not matter in this case, and perhaps a loophole will become apparent that allows me to take Pitch away without sacrificing any of his ties to human concerns.”

            Sandy raises his hand and asks her if she’d consider being invisible for the contest—just as a favor? To not agitate Eris.

            Mother Nature’s frown deepens, but she nods and chooses a wall to stand against, changing her coloring so she’s perfectly camouflaged.

            She does so not a moment too soon.

            A pinpoint of darkness appears in the center of the room and in seconds it grows into a human-sized whirlpool of shadow. From this, Eris steps, the shadows then merging with her hair. “Well, Guardians? Ready to give Pitch back? You’ll never guess the story, and I’m sure you don’t know how to break the spell.”

            “Actually, they do,” Eros says. As before, they have appeared with no warning. They lean back on a railing, smirking and quickly raising and lowering their eyebrows at Eris.

            “You! Why are you here?” Eris’ hair whips around her head, reaching toward them, as if it’d like to strangle Eros.

            “Why does everyone ask me that question? Well, in _this_ case I was invited. Also, it’s the best drama going right now in the spirit world.”

            “You told them how to break the spell? That was unwise, Eros.” She begins to gather shadows around her hands and a small whirlwind flutters the hem of her dress.

            “I merely gave them a hint. Cross my heart. Anyway, Eris, why get so agitated? Could it be that you think it’s possible for them to break it right now?”

            Eris takes a deep breath to calm herself. “Of course not.”

            Eros laughs, long and loud. “You’re a terrible liar, sister. Ahem.” They turn to the Guardians. “I’ll be quiet now. Please, carry on.”

            North turns to Sandy. “You have guess?” Sandy nods. “All right.” North steps forward. “Eris, we have the story we think you have put Pitch in.”

            “Tell me then, old man.”

            “Ha!” North shakes his head. “I am not the old man you should be asking. Sandy is the one who figured it out.”

            Eris glares down at Sandy, who now steps forward and floats upward so Eris has to glare at him eye to eye.

            To the astonishment of everyone in the room, Sandy doesn’t answer her in dreamsand symbols. Instead, he speaks aloud.

            His voice is soft, sweet, and calming like a lullaby, but at this moment it is underlain with steel. Even Pitch manages to tear his gaze away from Eris while Sandy talks, his face twisted in concentration as if he’s trying to remember something.

            What Sandy says is this: “Your old story, the story Pitch is in now, is Tam Lin.”

            Eris blinks in surprise, then slowly nods. “You’ve got it, Sandy. Why don’t you tell them what Pitch took from you while walking in the woods one day?”

            He was right. She’s stalling for time now, he knows it, trying to think of how to make the story’s ending work. Maybe he should have chosen a different tale, he thinks as he recalls how easily Pitch was ripped from his dreamsand in Eris’ palace. But she can’t reinstate her spell yet, can she? They’re still playing the game.

            “It’s no secret,” he says. “He took my dreamsand from me. And you’d better not ask who the fairy queen is in this version.”

            “I take the role with pleasure,” Eris replies. “But unlike her, I’m going to win this contest. You know the rules for this one, Sandy. You can have Pitch back—if you can hold on to him!”

            Sandy barely has enough time to fly back down to Pitch and grasp his wrist before he’s transformed into a huge, pure black tiger. The others rush forward to help, but Sandy waves them back. This is his challenge to face.

            The tiger tries to shake Sandy off and swipes at him with his other forepaw. Sandy forms a shield of dreamsand to stop the massive claws from reaching him, and in the momentary confusion of the tiger, he flips himself onto his back, making sure to keep hold of at least one handful of fur at all times. The tiger races around the room, maddened, doing everything it can to throw him off, trying to bite him, trying to claw him to ribbons. Sandy clings to his neck, wishing he could be gentler. The tiger is the easy one, he knows. If the transformations stopped now it would just be a matter of waiting things out. But that’s not how the story goes.

            As soon as Eris sees that Sandy’s hold on the tiger is secure, she flourishes her hand and he feels the fur vanish in his hands, to be replaced by scales. _Of course_ , Sandy thinks _, no ears to hang onto on this one_. The snake has a hood like a cobra, but is much larger than any natural creature. The challenge of the hood, Sandy immediately realizes, is that he must hold onto the snake lower on its body than the tiger, allowing it to have a much better chance of biting him.

            All right then. He won’t be shy about using the advantages he has that Janet didn’t. He makes a dreamsand muzzle, and after a few nerve-wracking seconds, manages to hook it over the snake’s mouth. It thrashes around the room for a few minutes more, knocking against the sealed doors, and Sandy’s glad for the sake of the yetis and elves that they took those precautions.

            “Let’s see how fast you are with that sand,” he hears Eris say, and suddenly the snake is falling to pieces beneath him. No—not pieces, _wasps!_ But despite Eris’ taunt, he is quick enough to capture every large black insect within a fine mesh net of dreamsand, capturing strays with slender dreamsand threads.

            Sandy lets the angrily buzzing net hover above his head, connected to his hand by a sturdy rope of dreamsand. He glances over to Eris, raising his eyebrows. Is this all she’s got?

            “To have and to hold,” Eris mutters, and the buzzing stops and the mesh bursts. When Sandy sees the form Pitch is in now, he immediately knows it’s the last one: nothing could be harder for him to hold on to than this. Pitch is now one of his own nightmares, in all its nightmaresand glory.

            But Sandy can’t hesitate. He jumps on the nightmare’s back, and immediately it tries to gain as much speed as it can in the limited space. Eros, Tooth, and Jack have taken to the air to avoid it, and Bunny and North have somehow managed to climb on top of the globe.

            As Sandy does his best to hang on, the problem he’s going to have with this form immediately becomes apparent. Wherever he touches the nightmare, it begins to be changed to dreamsand. Sandy’s eyes widen in horror. He can’t hold on to such a creature without changing it—without destroying it. He tries holding on to small handfuls of its mane, but they all turn gold within a few moments and Sandy has to break them off to keep the gold from spreading. _What is Eris playing at? Is she really so vindictive? Would she chance that I might destroy Pitch in her game?_ He tries to think, tries to understand her angle, but it’s nearly impossible to do while trying to ride a wild horse without touching it with more than a fingertip or two.

            After a desperate few minutes, though, the thought comes to him. Eris would not risk losing her captive this way. She wouldn’t win, then. Without Pitch she couldn’t gloat. And Eris’ powers are not sophisticated enough to truly turn Pitch into nightmaresand. Even Mother Nature might not be able to do so. When the nightmare next rears, Sandy unhesitatingly wraps his arms around its neck. It screams as the grains of its body begin to turn gold, but Sandy clenches his jaw and hangs on tighter.

            Soon, a gleaming golden steed stands calmly in the center of the globe room, Sandy sitting on its back. The other Guardians stare at him with worried expressions.

            “Did you…win?” Jack asks, finally.


	10. True Love's Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy breaks the spell, Mother Nature isn't impressed, and everything seems likely to go back to normal.

            Sandy glances at Eris and raises his eyebrows. She says nothing, clenching her fists and her jaw, as if by staying silent Sandy might not realize he’s won. But there’s not much chance of that. With a gesture, the golden horse dissolves. Cocooned inside its body is Pitch—naked again, perhaps to fit the story yet further.

            I should have realized sooner that you couldn’t actually turn Pitch into nightmare sand, Sandy signs to Eris. He continues: and now? I’ve kept a hold of him, I’ve hidden him, and now he’s revealed before you all, held in my dreamsand. I’ve won him.

            “Yes!” North throws his hands into the air. “All will be well! Eris, I think it is high time for you to leave.”

            “Hope you had some other way of occupying your time planned,” Bunny says, jumping down from the globe.

            Eris glares around at all of them. “I suppose I am bound by the rules of my own game,” she hisses. “Fine. You have Pitch.” She bares her teeth at them, not bothering to make it look like a smile. “But you haven’t broken the spell! He won’t spread the fear you need. He’ll spend all his time trying to get away from you and get back to me, away from the human world and away from his _duties_. What a glorious victory you’ve won.”

            “Oh no,” Tooth says, “whyever do you think we would be so cruel as to keep two lovers apart? If Pitch can’t bear to be apart from you, we’ll just have to keep you here.”

            “What?” Eris wasn’t expecting that, Sandy can tell. People never expect things like that from Tooth, but really, her job forces her to be as efficient as possible—why wouldn’t she have a solution like that?

            And Eris isn’t only surprised. As she realizes the implications of her being in Guardian territory and that the Guardians’ concern for humanity far outweighs her own opinion on the situation, Pitch shakes off the stupor the transformations had forced him into and peers at Eris from the cushion of dreamsand Sandy made from the remnants of the horse.

            She must be absolutely terrified for Pitch to notice it through the love spell, but she’s right to be, and the tension in the room edges ever closer to the breaking point. Tooth and the others wait for Eris to react: to run or to attack.

            As soon as Eris shifts her feet, Sandy floats up, holding his hands palm outward. Calm down. This can all be solved very quickly. All we need to do is break the spell.

            Everyone save Eros looks at Sandy with varying levels of confusion.

            “We’ve been over this, Sandy,” Jack says. “We can’t break the spell.”

            Sandy just laughs silently and shakes his head. This might not be as dramatic as Eros was hoping, but there’s no point in prolonging the scene.

            He floats back down to Pitch, who still sits on the cushion and perhaps looks the most confused out of all of them. “I’m not under a spell,” he protests.

            Tooth and Jack alight nearby, readying themselves for whatever might happen after Sandy does whatever he’s going to do.

            He barely notices them. This is the moment of truth. Eros told him that he was, indeed, Pitch’s true love, but Eros wasn’t the most reliable of spirits. But the story, the story worked! But Eris hadn’t planned that. Sandy walks up to Pitch, but while he’s still an arm’s length away, Eris calls out, “Pitch, my love, come to me!”

            He stands clumsily, like a marionette. “Yes, dearest!” he calls. He begins a stumbling run towards her, and North, Tooth, Bunny, and Jack hurry to overtake him, readying their weapons, prepared to do everything in their power to keep either Pitch or Eris from leaving. But nothing they’re prepared to do is what needs to be done.

            Before he can get up any speed, Sandy flies in front of Pitch, grabbing his shoulders. Before he can do more than stare at him in surprise, Sandy raises his hands from his shoulders to the sides of his face and leans in for a kiss.

            It’s clumsy at first, given how it started as more of a tackle, but in a moment Pitch isn’t trying to run forward anymore and Sandy knows it’s worked. And he’s going to take advantage of this situation, no matter what else is going on. He deepens the kiss, experimentally pressing his tongue past Pitch’s lips, and Pitch is only too eager to open his mouth to the Sandman, and Sandy would just love to have this moment go on and on, when he’s interrupted by a sharp “What?”

            Sandy pulls back and smiles around at the other Guardians, trying to look a little sheepish instead of just joyful. He’s not sure he succeeds.

            “What?!” Bunny repeats. Jack glances around at the others, trying to figure out if he should laugh or join in Bunny’s shock.

            “See…stranger things…told you so,” he says.

            “Yay!” Eros exclaims from the sidelines, throwing handfuls of glittery confetti into the air. Tooth blows it away from the others with her wings so it doesn’t land on anyone in the room.

            “Eros!” she says sharply.

            “It was ordinary magic confetti, I _swear_. Anyway, aren’t you happy? True love has been found! Oh and the whole end of the world thing’s been cancelled…”

            “Da… _that_ is good,” North begins slowly, when he’s interrupted by Eris.

            “How did you figure it out?!” she shrieks. “Eros must have given you more than a hint.”

            “No, they told the truth earlier,” North says. “Gave us hint that any child would know how to break the spell. And is big idea in stories, right, Eris? True love’s kiss.”

            What do you mean, ‘figure it out’? Sandy signs to Eris. How could I have not known?

            “Oh my gods and you didn’t do anything about it for literally thousands of years, made me want to beat both of you with a golden bat if you weren’t so powerful.” Eros sighs. “But you’re going to be making up for lost time now, aren’t you?”

            Sandy blushes, and Jack raises his eyebrows so high they’re in danger of disappearing into his hair. “Can we head this conversation off at the pass or—”  

            “Hello! I’m still here!” Eris folds her arms and glowers at them. “So you won. I can’t affect the human world anymore. But I can certainly still affect the spirit world, and guess what, that includes this place and all of you. And without Pitch to occupy my time, I’m going to get very bored—you wouldn’t like me when I’m bored.”

            “They don’t like you now,” Eros says, edging closer to Bunny, who stands next to Jack.

            “Eros! Stop interrupting!”

            “I’m just trying to be helpful. Eris, they’re going to kick your ass if you keep going on like this, and it’ll ruin the mood and so really, can you not? Come on. I’ll get you internet in your trench! You could totally get more power that way. Loki did.”

            “Eros! No. Loki did not get famous on the internet for spreading chaos. He got famous for being in a metric fuckton of incest porn. Agh! Why are we having this conversation? You are the most infuriating sibling!”

            “But can’t you just go home and let me enjoy Sandy and Pitch finally being together?”

            “Everyone. Shut. Up.” Mother Nature drops her disguise and steps into the center of the room. “Now. This situation was ridiculous to begin with, and, frankly, it still seems ridiculous to me. But Eris, you no longer have any right to be here, and Eros—”

            “You can’t deny that I have a right to be here! You can tell what’s going on, can’t you, Nature? Not that you’re concerned with _love_ , per se, but—”

            Mother Nature fixes them with a look. “As I was saying. Eros _may_ have some legitimate claim to be here, but I would like them to leave as soon as possible. They should remember that, ultimately, everything that happened was their fault, and I did not appreciate any of it.”

            “Oh would you look at the time!” Eros glances at their bare wrist. “I need to go help Puck do something annoying. ButbeforeIgoNorthyoubettersaysomethingorI’mcomingbacktohelpyouwhetheryoulikeitornot. Okay! Okay! Going!” They vanish in a cloud of glitter that Bunny the forces Bunny to jump toward Jack to avoid it. The breeze Jack uses to send it away from the others is a bit stronger than strictly necessary, but no one comments, given the circumstances.

            “Eris?” Mother Nature raises her eyebrow at the goddess, who remains standing in the globe room.

            She smirks, and grows so that she’s ever so slightly taller than Mother Nature. “Threaten all you like. I’m supernatural, and you can’t directly do anything to me.”

            Mother Nature stares impassively at Eris until she glances away. “This is true. But I’m sure your Aunt Demeter and Great-great-great Aunt Gaia would be interested in taking my side if this quarrel escalated, and they certainly could do things directly to you.”

            Eris grits her teeth and shrinks about a foot in height. “You wouldn’t really tell my aunts what I did, would you? I mean, I’m not a threat _anymore_ and, uh, you’re always said to be so fair…”

            “Fair? I? Nature is not Justice, Eris. Now, leave, and, if you are wise, you will confine your mischief to beings not under my purview for quite some time. And I do mean quite some time…by _my_ standards of time.”

            Eris sighs heavily and diminishes to human height once more. Before leaving, she glares at Sandy and Pitch. “You’re not even good for each other,” she says. “My plan would have worked if you weren’t so fucking weird.” In the next instant, she vanishes.

            Tooth sighs in relief. “I’m so glad we didn’t have to go to plan B—but, Sandy? Was Eros telling the truth? Thousands of years? I just—what—last Easter?”

            “Tooth speaks for me as well,” Bunny interjects.

            “Ahem.” Mother Nature draws their attention back to her. “May I assume that _now_ you have everything under control and Pitch will be well on his way to recovery?”

            Sandy nods emphatically, the others, more slowly.

            “Good. Remember the balance. And kindly don’t do anything that will attract my attention for a few thousand years. It’s too much to hope for, I know, but do try. I’ve had enough of your shenanigans to last me for five times as long.”

            “Shenanigans?” Jack tilts his head to the side.

            “Shenanigans,” repeats Mother Nature. “There’s no word more apt in a language that all of you know. Now, I take my leave of you. When we meet again, I hope it is under less trying circumstances.” In a flurry of snow, she flies over to the window and phases through it. The last they see of her is her tall form growing taller as she walks across the tundra, until she finally becomes indistinguishable from the landscape.

            There is a long pause. “I suppose I should let the yetis and elves know it is safe to come out now,” says North.

            “No, no, wait!” Jack says. “Come on! You’re going to leave without hearing Sandy’s explanation?”

            What is there to explain? Sandy signs, his eyes wide and innocent.

            Bunny groans. “You were playing tonsil hockey with Pitch just a few minutes ago, what _isn’t_ there to explain?”

            “Actually,” Pitch says, speaking for the first time since the breaking of the spell, “I admit I’m somewhat at a loss here as well. Not that I’m…not pleased…afterallitdidbreakthespell.” Pitch blushes purple, and tries to summon some shadows to re-form his robe as casually as possible. His success in nonchalance is debatable, but in the end he isn’t standing naked in front of five of his sometime enemies.

            Sandy turns to Pitch and places his hand on his shoulder. _I’ll have a better explanation for you later. In Dreamland. Don’t look so surprised. They don’t know I can talk to you this way._

            Pitch blinks at him and nods.

            Turning to the other Guardians, Sandy tries to offer them the best explanation he can come up with in signs and the occasional spelled-out word. But it’s difficult—nearly impossible, actually, to compress fifty thousand years of history into a few minutes. Basically, it boils down to asking them to remember what he said on the submarine about constantly interacting with Pitch. They’re almost the same. Dreams and nightmares are always intertwined—signing this causes Jack to look away and stare into space for a moment or two—and Sandy should have reached out to Pitch sooner. But centuries are hard to keep track of, and Pitch did do some things that required retribution…

            “Sandy, he killed you,” Bunny can’t help but point out.

            _Easter_ Bunny, Sandy signs, it’s okay. I came back.

            “So…now what?” Jack asks. “Eggnog all around? Everything goes back to normal? Except plus Pitch.”

            I’m going to take Pitch back to Dreamland to recover, Sandy tells them. Focus on your normal Guardian duties. I’ll take care of him.

            Pitch smiles ever so slightly. “What if I try to escape back to the Nightmare Realms?”

            Sandy rolls his eyes. I’ll follow you, of course. Dreamland is just a lot more comfortable.

            “I don’t need to be comfortable to spread fear.”

            And you already know how to do that. Why do you think that’s going to be the main part of your recovery? Sandy slowly winks at Pitch, and doesn’t wait for him to recover from being flustered before turning to the other Guardians. Anybody have any questions? I promise this situation is under control.

            Tooth flexes her wings. “Well, Sandy, I trust you. This is just going to…take some getting used to. I, um, do have a question though. Do you think it would, ah, be a good idea for the rest of us to stay awake for a while?”

            Sandy casts a small smile at Pitch before turning back to look up at Tooth. If ever there was a being who could undermine his professionalism…

            That’s up to Pitch, he signs, but I have my hopes.

            Bunny nods and passes his hand over his face. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going to stay awake until I see you again with my own eyes.”

            Sandy only laughs silently.

            “Okay,” North claps his hands. “Now is time to let yetis and elves know is all clear. Also to tell resolution of situation; I think elves have been betting cookies on results. But I do not know, maybe nobody won—eh, anyway: Sandy, Pitch—I wish you well.”

            Sandy bows slightly to him and the other Guardians, then turns and offers his hands to Pitch. Still sitting on the dreamsand, he reaches out to Sandy and places his thumbs in the other’s small palms, wrapping his fingers around his hands. With a small tornado of dreamsand and a breath of sea air, the two vanish.

            Tooth smiles a little, but when she sees the others eyeing her sidelong she quickly resumes a neutral expression. “All’s well that ends well, right? We can discuss this or not during our meeting at the next full moon! See you all then! I’ve got to get back to tooth collecting, haven’t slacked off this long since…” but she’s already flying away, leaving North frowning and Jack and Bunny looking on bemusedly in the globe room.

            “Don’t we need her to undo the spells on the doors?” Bunny asks.

            North shakes his head. “I will undo all spells on doors.  I can control all at North Pole. Just takes more time. You two will be going soon too, yes?”

            “Yeah…” Jack leans on his staff. “Not that flying around and making it snow is _normal_ , but it’s a lot more normal than the past week. And someone’s got to see if the kids are getting safer…if…whatever Sandy has planned…is working. Man, this is still weird. See you soon, though!”

            Bunny taps his foot on the floor and shakes his head at Jack as he flies away. “You know, North, sometimes I wonder how much that kid knows about mythology. I mean, I think the whole thing is strange, but that’s because I thought I knew Sandy. But…”

            “But situation is not entirely unprecedented.” North nods in agreement. “You know Bunny, we should tell him all the stories we know.”

            “Not _all_ ,” says Bunny. “Just the freaky ones. To make up for that prank last July.”

            North lets out a single laugh before waving farewell to Bunny as he jumps down the tunnel.

 

***

 

            Dorcas and Vlad don’t know what to do with all the time off chores they’ve won.


	11. Poetry in Dreamland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy and Pitch work things out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some parts of this chapter will make more sense if you know what ASMR is. From Wikipedia: “Autonomous sensory meridian response" (ASMR) is a neologism for an alleged biological phenomenon characterized as a distinct, pleasurable tingling sensation in the head, scalp or peripheral regions of the body in response to visual, auditory, olfactory, and/or cognitive stimuli.” It’s not a sexual thing, but it’s nice and it accounts for Bob Ross’ popularity. Here’s my favorite ASMR video if you want an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVpfHgC3ye0

            “So,” says Pitch, sitting on the golden shores of Dreamland with his knees tucked under his chin, “Looks like you’re my true love. Do you love me?”

            Sandy looks at him quizzically. _What kind of a question is that? How could it be otherwise?_

            Pitch takes his turn with the quizzical expression. “Sandy, I know we’ve spent a lot of time together over the millennia, but I always thought we were, at the end of the day, enemies. Opposites. When we weren’t fighting each other I knew I still had to watch my actions, because ultimately you would be more loyal to your duties and, later, the Guardians, than our strange relationship. If you thought I did something that needed stopping, you wouldn’t wait for me to explain. Not that I’d have a good explanation…Oh, and how could it be otherwise? And I’ve heard tales of those who find their true love is a stranger, or someone they thought they hated, and then they must face that fact. I don’t know how love magic works.”

            _I loved you long before we had to figure out who your true love was._ Sandy looks out over the shining sea. _I should have told you a long time ago. Like Eros said—thousands of years ago._

            “Why didn’t you tell me?”

            _I never got any sign from you that you might love me back. Sometimes I doubted that you were capable of love. Sometimes I thought that you would never believe that I loved you without wanting to change you._

            “Those are good reasons for a few decades, Sandman—”

            Sandy rolls his eyes at Pitch. _Do you want bad reasons, then? Habit. Being too busy._

_No, Pitch. Think back on all our games. All the strange dreams. All those times when you were with me and you let yourself be a person instead of just your title. I think the reason, above any other, that I didn’t tell you, is that I forgot it needed to be said. After all, I don’t—or didn’t—say much in the first place._ A small smile grows on his face.  <i> _You were my other half. My shadow. As long as we both existed, we could never be lonely. I know I was wrong about that last, but it was what I felt._

_You and I—you never stayed away from me, until recently. And that was only for a short time, even if our reunion was violent. But you were always caught up in my wake, and I was always caught up in yours. And after fifty thousand years—well, you know me best, Pitch. I hope I know you best—though your skill with illusions makes you hard to crack. Fifty thousand years. I suppose that was another problem. I forget being human, sometimes, Pitch. If we saw each other night after night, if we played or if we fought, if our sands mixed over the minds of dreamers, what else was there?_

            Pitch sees a faint goldenrod blush begin to creep into Sandy’s cheeks as he looks away and out to sea.

            _It wasn’t until later that I realized that I realized that I…wanted you in a more…human way._ The blush doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon and Pitch’s glances at Sandy begin to add up to a stare. He practically glows with it. Pitch has never seen a light he’s liked more, but Sandy’s still making a point of not looking over at Pitch.

            “Sandy.” Pitch’s voice is quiet. “You really should have told me. But then…maybe I should have asked. Instead, I suppose I started to think that the games, the fights, the strange dreams—that those encounters were as much companionship as someone like me could ever hope to have. When I vanished, I vanished so as to not wear out my welcome. You’ve been a constant presence in my thoughts for a very long time, Sandy. And now, when you imply that you will love me as I am, that you want me? I hope that this is a dream that’s passing through the gate of horn.”

            Sandy turns back to Pitch. _So you’ll kiss me again, and you’ll want to?_ He bites his lower lip unconsciously—or maybe consciously; Pitch has never been sure whether he does these things on purpose—and it’s Pitch’s turn to blush.

            “Of—of course I will. And—uh—more. If you like. I think you should know that, for quite some time, the thought that you would justifiably murder me if you ever found out the things I had imagined the two of us doing was on the short list of my personal fears.”

            Sandy begins to smirk. _And now that you know that I won’t? Show me your dreams, Boogeyman._

            Pitch smiles. “You’re awfully confident, saying that to a king of Nightmares.”

            _More like old and impatient. Tell me, Pitch. What have you imagined? What have you seen us doing, coming together in the dark?_

            “Well, that, for one.” Pitch sighs. “I’d love to tell you, Sandy. In great detail and with demonstrations. Ever since we shook hands after that opium dream—I think I craved you before then, but after that, I knew I’d never be able to let the feel of your soft skin vanish from my mind, no matter that then I felt confident that you would be repulsed if you knew. Ah, I’m rambling. That time is past, there’s no going back. But the point is, I’d love to tell you those dreams. I’d love to know yours. To know what kind of fantasies are lurking underneath your golden hair. To know what you want to do to me. I bet you bite, don’t you?” Pitch eyes him slyly.

            Sandy laughs silently, though his blush returns stronger than ever. Why yes, yes he _would_ bite, if Pitch ever indicated that he wanted him to do so. He would leave purple marks all over Pitch’s neck and chest, and no one would be able to deny that Pitch was his, or say that he, the shining golden Sandman, was innocent of such things. _If you’d love to tell me your dreams of me, why don’t you?_

            “Because I’m still so very tired, and because I’m still afraid,” Pitch says simply. “I’m afraid that this isn’t real, and…you know how dreams are.” He raises a brow at Sandy. “Taking things slow would make this seem more real.”

            Sandy takes one of Pitch’s long-fingered hands in his smaller ones. _World enough and time…_

            “Yes, we do have that, but you just said…”

_…vaster than empires and more slow…I’ll be patient for you._ Sandy looks up into Pitch’s eyes, beginning to massage his hand slightly. _Tell me what you want, Pitch. Whatever you want, I want to be the one to give it to you._

            Pitch visibly relaxes. “You’re already giving me what I want by not being like Eris. Love spells…I’m surprised that as a king of nightmares I don’t have more familiarity with them.”

            _Then is this all you want now?_ Sandy asks, hoping that his mental voice is free of disappointment. _To sit here and hold hands?_

            “It might be better... But even holding hands with you is going to lead me to make decisions against my better judgment….I didn’t say let go. I still want your touch, Sandy. I just don’t want anything that would remind me of Eris for a while.”

            _Then touch you shall have. No demands._

Sandy leads Pitch to the dream palace, into a bedroom, and onto the large bed within. Pitch seems somewhat nervous at this development, but he doesn’t pull his hand away. Sandy wonders if Pitch knows how much he trusts Sandy.

            But that conversation can wait. Now, it’s time for Pitch to relax. To be touched as he hasn’t been for centuries, and for no reason but that all-too-human comfort of skin against skin.

            With no sound but the soft sibilance of the waves outside, Sandy rests Pitch’s head in his lap and begins to draw his fingers through his hair, again and again and again, gently massaging his scalp, lightly scratching at the skin with blunt fingernails. Pitch’s eyelids half-close, and his lips upturn in a very small smile as Sandy moves from his scalp to his face, lightly brushing his fingertips from Pitch’s chin to his hairline, tracing cheekbones and jawline and outline of lips, of course, but also smoothing his forehead and hairless brows.

            “Is it all right if I do the same to your arms and legs?” Sandy asks in his softest whisper, bending forward so that his lips almost touch Pitch’s forehead. Pitch shivers and nods slightly, letting his shadow-clothing fall away until all that remains is a strip of cloth around his hips for modesty’s sake. Sandy smiles to himself. It’s a bit strange, considering how often he’s seen Pitch naked in the past few days, but he also finds it endearing. As if they really are just beginning to get to know each other.

            Sandy sends out tendrils of dreamsand that end in hands much the same size and shape of his own to slowly trail down Pitch’s arms and long, long legs. Pitch sighs softly. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever paid this much attention to me, Sandy,” he murmurs. Sandy bends forward once more and presses the lightest kiss imaginable to Pitch’s forehead.

            “Pitch…I haven’t even begun,” he breathes, and Pitch shivers again. It’s sweet to see him this way, so calm, with pleasant chills running up and down his spine—Sandy can always tell the type, and it’s wonderful to see how right he is, to see how whispers affect him. But it will be just as sweet when Pitch isn’t simply putty in his hands.

            He won’t dwell on that now, though. Leaving a pillow of dreamsand under Pitch’s head and dreamsand hands to continue running through his hair, Sandy moves down on the bed to pick up one of Pitch’s hands and begins to massage it carefully, pressing his fingers into the spaces in between the bones, rubbing the palm from center to edge, drawing his small hands up along each long gray finger.

            “Are you trying to make me forget about wanting to take things slow?” Pitch sounds like he’s on the edge of sleep.

            Interesting, Sandy thinks. As if he hadn’t already been preoccupied with Pitch hands…

            “No,” he whispers, “I wouldn’t mind if you did, but I can tell you’re about to fall asleep.”

            “True,” says Pitch. “I just haven’t felt this safe in a while.”

            Sandy kisses his palm and moves over to begin work on the other hand. When he’s done, he balances out the first kiss with another one, and lets the dreamsand hands disperse. “Time to sleep?” Sandy asks against Pitch’s ear. Pitch nods and gathers his shadow robes up around him once more.

            “Stay by me?” He asks, turning on his side.

            “Of course.” Sandy curls up against him so that they are facing each other, and Sandy could press his nose against Pitch’s collarbone if he were less disciplined. His small form fits perfectly into the larger curve that Pitch’s body makes, as he always knew it would. He’s thought, many a time, of being surrounded entirely by Pitch—a very pleasant thought indeed, and one that can wait for Pitch to be ready, he reminds himself.

            As Pitch settles down to fall asleep, he lets one of his arms drape over Sandy and begins to run his fingers through Sandy’s hair—a desultory effort towards reciprocity that makes Sandy’s heart race.

            And then, as Pitch begins to close his eyes for longer and longer moments, opening his eyes less and less each time, he begins to recite poetry. He speaks so quietly that anyone less intent than Sandy on catching every word would have missed most of it.

 

_“Thou fair-haired angel of the evening,_

_Now, while the sun rests on the mountains, light_

_Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown_

_Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!_

_Smile on our loves; and, while thou drawest the_

_Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew_ —well, golden sand,” Pitch interrupts himself, yawning a little.

_“On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes_

_In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on_

_The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,_

_And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,_

_Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,_

_And the lion glares through the dun forest:_

_The fleeces of our flocks are cover’d with_

_Thy sacred dew: protect them with thine influence.”_

 

            Pitch is just ready to go to sleep after the last word, and Sandy sends him on with a few grains of sand. He, however, will probably be staying up for hours. Oh, the poem, the poem! It’s William Blake instead of William Shakespeare, but then, Eris had gotten Shakespeare. Everyone knew about Shakespeare’s sonnets, everyone knew they were supposed to be the finest English love poetry. But none of those sonnets would have been the right poem for this moment. Blake’s was. And Pitch knew it. If he wasn’t curled up against Pitch, Sandy would forget that he still could want anything more.

 

***

 

            Sandy knows Pitch knows what Sandy’s doing over the next few days, with all his casual touches and warm smiles. He does it anyway. After all, Pitch doesn’t seem inclined to sleep after that first night, so he can’t snuggle up to him regularly, and he’s got to try and solve that problem _somehow_.

            Pitch looks at him questioningly at first, and then more sternly, requesting time alone to send out nightmares, and Sandy is beset with worries that Pitch is going to be stubborn about this. It wouldn’t be surprising, because this is Pitch, after all, but it almost makes Sandy want to beat him with the golden bat Eros mentioned back at the Pole.

            Finally, though, Pitch invites him to watch as he sends fully-fledged nightmares from Dreamland. He’s been working from an island about the size of a football field not too far from the Palace island. It’s covered with dune grass of many colors, and looks like an oriental rug when viewed from the air. As he floats above the multi-colored grass, Sandy is puzzled to notice that there seems to be a weak spot in Dreamland here.

            It doesn’t feel like it’s caused by Pitch—he certainly knows Pitch well enough to recognize anything he’s done with his power.

            Oh well. Sandy decides he’ll investigate the problem after Pitch’s demonstration that he’s well on his way to regaining full power.

            Pitch stands in the center of the field, closes his eyes, and slowly raises his arms while inhaling. Sandy can feel a prickle of fear at the back of his mind, but in this situation it doesn’t grow into more fear, but rather engenders exhilaration. He’s always liked watching Pitch raise power, even when it was directed against him. With him, the process is as seamless as the breathing he uses to control it.

            Now, as he breathes and Nightmares begin to emerge from the sand of the island—Sandy grins, impressed, when he notices that the sand only turns black once it is free of the island’s surface—there’s a certain springlike tension in his arms and back that speaks of hidden depths—no, hidden abysses—of strength, reminding Sandy of just how powerful Pitch is meant to be. Mother Nature had been right to be furious that a goddess had taken him under her control.

            Once the Nightmares are independent of the island sand, Pitch lets his hands drop and strides quickly in a shallow arc near the edge of the beach. He brushes his fingertips against an invisible boundary, and after he has described a large space in this way, he moves off to the side, gesturing for his Nightmares to step forward. They toss their heads and roll their eyes as they do, whinnying and nickering to each other in patterns that sound unnervingly like human speech.

            Sandy wonders what they’re talking about, but he’s distracted from that line of thought when Pitch, with a sweeping gesture, smoothly opens a crack in Dreamland. It looks like an opening eye—no jagged edges—which tells Sandy that Pitch must be almost fully recovered by now. He never did like leaving anything messy if it could be neat and still serve its purpose.

            Once the crack is wide enough, Pitch gestures again, and the Nightmares, who have been stamping with excitement while waiting, gallop as fast as they can (sometimes running _through_ each other, Sandy notices) into the rift. Oddly, as Sandy watches them go, he thinks for a moment that he can see a certain shadowy writhing at the weak point he noticed before. Yet whatever it was, it couldn’t have been that important, since when Sandy helps Pitch close the breach—even, or especially, as he completes his recovery, Pitch does not have any ease with fixing things—he finds that the thin point already seems stronger.

            _Where did you send them?_ Sandy asks.

            “They go everywhere.” Pitch smiles with no softness in his face. “This time, though, I directed their birth-gallop towards an old enemy who couldn’t be bothered to try to break in through either of Dreamland’s two gates.”

            _Seems like it worked._ Sandy floats over to Pitch and presses on the unseen border.

            Pitch glances down, falsely modest. “Just a little way I protect my own realm. Also, as someone who knows what it is like to be trampled by Nightmares, I think I can be fairly confident that whoever was making the weak spot will avoid the behavior that brought about such retaliation in the first place.”

            _You think you know who it was?_

            “I have my suspicions. But it doesn’t really matter now, does it? After all, it’s impossible to break into Dreamland. All I did was discourage someone from a pointless task.”

            Sandy nods and floats up to Pitch. _How do you feel after sending all those Nightmares out?_

            “Not sleepy, if that’s what you’re asking.” Pitch smirks at Sandy’s annoyed expression. “I feel…more alive than ever. Invincible as I never was. In complete control of the Nightmares and the fear they spread and gather. And so…since I feel in complete control over my duties…I think it might be time…” he reaches one long, slender arm around Sandy and brings his lips to his ear, “for me to lose control otherwise.”

            Sandy grins and turns to Pitch to kiss him, and it’s so much better than the spell-breaking kiss, as Pitch now eagerly kisses back and oh he’s never going to get enough of that weird long tongue in his mouth. He looks up pleadingly at Pitch when he pulls away, but Pitch only leans in to whisper in his ear, “I’m going to devour you.”

            Okay. So that tongue doesn’t always have to be in his mouth. Pitch can talk if he wants.

            _And I’m going to see what can make the Boogeyman scream,_ Sandy replies in sign, though he’s not sure if the sand is saying what he wants it to say right now. Pitch only chuckles and starts to pull at the collar of Sandy’s pajamas.

            “I’m looking forward to you rendering me incoherent. But remember, I still had command over poetry that first night.”

            “Is that a challenge?” Sandy asks softly before nipping at the junction between Pitch’s neck and shoulder, causing Pitch to inhale sharply.

            “Yes, yes it’s a challenge and you’d better try to win Sandy.” He’s almost babbling already and Sandy smiles as he licks the place he bit. This is going to be ever so much fun. He hopes Frost hasn’t slipped up and gone to sleep, but he doesn’t really care. He’s not going to tone this down.

 

***

 

“So soul into the soul may flow,

Though it to body first repair—Fuck,” Pitch breathes, as Sandy twines tendrils of dreamsand around his wrists, tethering them to the headboard of the bed. Sandy gently licks one of his nipples and Pitch hums with pleasure. Sandy smiles against his skin, and laughs silently when Pitch declares that “just because you made me forget the end of Donne’s ‘The Ecstasy’ doesn’t mean you’ve won yet.”

 

***

 

            Sandy removes his mouth from Pitch’s body to whisper “you’re cheating,” when he hears the beginning of the next poem Pitch has chosen.

            “But you can still win,” Pitch gasps before continuing.

 

“your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skillfully,mysteriously) her first rose”

 

            _If you insist,_ signs Sandy, pressing a well-slicked finger into Pitch. He moans and arches, tugging on the ties holding his wrists, but after a moment or two, he still continues with the poem—though Sandy doubts it’s usually read with such heavy breathing for punctuation.

            “…only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)—ahhh, Sandy, Sandy, mmhhm I give up I give up I give up please need you in me not just your hands I—”

            Sandy is only too happy to oblige. He even unties Pitch’s arms, knowing that Pitch will immediately reach his arms around to caress Sandy’s back, and oh yes now he is completely surrounded by Pitch and it is better than he ever imagined.

            It will be quite some time before anyone dreams a dream that’s only sweet or only a nightmare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That last line that Pitch couldn’t recite? “nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands” (from the e.e. Cummings poem that begins “somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond”) That’s why Sandy says he was cheating—Cummings’ grammar is already on the skids, so Pitch could be choosing his poetry to mask the fact that he was right on the edge of losing it.
> 
> The "soul into the soul" quote was from John Donne's "The Ecstasy".
> 
> You may wonder why Pitch knows all this poetry. So do I. I invite you to join me in not caring.


End file.
